Breezeway Housing

Breezeway Housing emulates a housing development that is socially sustaining for communities and that protects and promotes natural environments as part of Brisbane’s subtropical identity. It presents a counter-position to the current conventional default of high-rise concrete towers spreading through the inner city, overshadowing streets, blocking views, and further diminishing the remaining fragments of the city’s green spaces.

The project sits behind the Kangaroo Point Cliffs, in a suburb dominated by traffic along Main Street and largely disconnected from its sense of place. The urban strategy is simple: create a cross-block connection from Main Street through the site, traversing gardens, park spaces, and leading to views over the cliffs. This connection becomes the thread that weaves together the disjointed neighbourhood, forming a place for crossing paths, exercising, and social gatherings.

The scale of the project deliberately remains between five and eight storeys to advocate for medium-density living—the “missing middle” in Brisbane. Three buildings encircle a lush central courtyard, with select moments of entry. The natural shade created by the leafy courtyard combined with the materiality of the Brisbane tuff façades evokes the feeling of shelter inside a gorge and references back to the cliffs this social housing stands on. Living spaces and communal areas face the courtyard, drawing on the relief and amenity it provides, and exist in balance with this landscape network.

The name Breezeway Housing stems from the reuse and adaptation of the existing Breezeway Lodge hostel into a hybrid building containing apartments and a co-working café. New verandah spaces added to the northern façade give each apartment more space, natural light, flexibility of use, and improved views. The adjacent new buildings share a similar flexibility with post-and-beam structures, allowing adaptation in the future. Their ground floors introduce an adult learning centre with multipurpose rooms as a complementary program to the social housing.

At the crux of the project is the idea that these community programs, facilities, and gardens belong to the residents and will socially sustain and grow with the community over time. The resulting social cohesion becomes the project’s greatest strength—creating an environment where people feel supported and have a genuine sense of belonging.