Robin Boyd Foundation: Home Made Melbourne at Walsh Street
In August 2024 we were privileged to facilitate a panel discussion at Walsh St called Home Made Melbourne on co-housing and co-development through the decades.
Panelists Craig Rossetti, Debbie Ryan, James Legge and Jasmine Palmer explored the connections between co-housing and co-development projects, cross examining a timeline of case studies from the 1990s to the 2020s.
The case studies explored project creation & inception, design and development of the brief and critically the financial model.
Personally it was great to meet some of this city's fellow innovators and realise that what we are doing is not unique. What we are doing is part of a continuum of effort that many different innovators and agitators in our community, particularly architects who have been inspired to do things better, have taken on. So inspired that they have been willing to take on the personal financial risks to achieve a better outcome and build themselves a better future. It was also interesting but perhaps not surprising to hear of the common struggles and challenges all of the speakers encounted with their builds, regardless of the time they progressed their project.
It was also really nice to be able take some time and reflect on the impact Robin Boyd's The Australian Ugliness has had on my personal journey. At its heart this book calls for us to always strive to do better and make better decisions about how we co-create our cities and towns and neighbourhoods. I remember reading this book before I started Property Collectives. I remember it having an impact on me but have forgotten perhaps just how much of an impact it had!