Tone Wheeler
Every day, publications like this one feature beautiful houses crafted for a client and site, but in the totality of suburban houses, these are the extreme exception to the rule. Almost all new houses in the suburbs are not one off in design and construction and the 150-year history of Australian suburban housing will show that it has always been thus.
In every era these houses are ‘pattern-based mass-made’; pattern-based as the house design uses a standardised plan, or pattern, with minor variations; and ‘mass-made’ because they are built in volume production. Currently they are called project homes, based on a just a few patterns, and built every year in the tens of thousands. But like every previous era they serve us very poorly.