Adaptive housing,
programmed
by geometry.
An international design competition for the NSW Government's Housing Pattern Book — targeting mid-rise apartments to guide new housing across New South Wales. A parametric system built to adapt one design to any site: variable plot sizes, slopes, parking conditions and unit configurations, all resolved through a single master Grasshopper script.
Ventilation, solar access,
and shadow impact.
Detailed environmental analysis of the Stage 2 competition site in Campbelltown, developed using Autodesk Forma. Natural ventilation confirmed at 100% across all 40 units; direct sun exceeding three hours on June 21st achieved for 85% of the building.
validated floor by floor with Autodesk Forma.
One script.
Any site.
NSW's housing shortage won't be solved by one good design — it needs a typology that works on every site it lands on. Designing each variation manually takes months and produces inconsistent results across hundreds of lots with different shapes, slopes, road conditions and unit mixes.
A single Grasshopper master script connects plot size, topography, parking condition, unit type and site orientation into one live model. Change a slider — the building updates. No redraw, no rework, no separate file per scenario. The pattern book stops being a static document and becomes a deployable generative tool.
The script that drives
every variation.
All design logic lives in one Grasshopper canvas. A button or slider change cascades through plot geometry, floor stacking, parking configuration and unit layout simultaneously — producing a fully resolved model ready for analysis or documentation.
Four road conditions,
five lot sizes.
Single road, rear lane, corner block with two roads, corner block with three roads — each condition tested across lot sizes from 28 × 36 m to 63 × 36 m. One parameter change switches the configuration; the building, unit count and setbacks resolve automatically.
from 28 × 36 m to 63 × 36 m.
Flat, sloped, with or
without parking.
The same design accommodates flat sites, 1.4 m slopes and 4 m slopes — each with three parking strategies: no parking, at-grade, and underground. Twelve combinations resolved parametrically without altering the core typology.
and underground, four configurations.
From site
to unit.
With site constraints resolved, the same script applies the unit mix — demonstrating how housing typology adapts to different household types and densities without diverging from the core design logic.
through iterative planning —
each unit wired into the master script.
housing diversity at every level.
A modular facade
from a fixed catalogue.
Seven facade module types — louvres, screening, glazing, solid panels — assembled from a shared catalogue. The parametric system distributes them across each unit face responding to orientation, privacy and street context.
louvres, glazing, screens and solid panels.
Parametric design
for housing diversity.
In collaboration with Studio Workshop Architects Associates and ClareDesign, the submission reached the Stage 2 shortlist from an international field of 212 entries. The brief called for mid-rise housing typologies — 3–6 storey apartments — that could be applied across diverse suburban contexts throughout New South Wales.
The computational design contribution centred on a parametric system capable of adapting the architectural proposal to any site context. Variable plot dimensions, topographic conditions, parking strategies and unit configurations are all resolved through a single master Grasshopper script — enabling the team to validate multiple scenarios rapidly during both design and review.
Environmental performance analysis — natural ventilation modelling, solar access simulation and shadow impact assessment — was developed in parallel using Autodesk Forma, validating the design against the competition's sustainability criteria.
This competition entry was developed in collaboration with Studio Workshop Architects Associates and ClareDesign. Atelier Designa contributed parametric design, computational modelling and sustainability analysis. The NSW Housing Pattern Book Design Competition was organised by the Government Architect NSW with Homes NSW, Landcom and Sydney Olympic Park Authority.
