There is a spreadsheet trap that has plagued the Australian multi-residential sector for decades. It goes like this: identify the most statistically "safe" apartment type – usually a generic 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom box – and copy-paste it 50 times across a concrete grid. Banks and conservative valuers love this monoculture because it looks like peak efficiency. It streamlines construction, simplifies the plumbing stack, and gives the marketing agency a single, easy-to-digest demographic to target.

Based on my experience in property development, I know that building a monolithic block of identical apartments is a commercial risk. By designing for a limited demographic, you narrow your buyer pool. When the market shifts, or when that specific demographic dries up, your sales stall, your holding costs skyrocket, and your debt becomes a problem. At Austin Maynard Architects, we believe that commercial bankability and genuine community building are symbiotic, and both rely on a diversity of housing product. Mixing your apartment typologies fundamentally de-risks your sales while building a better neighbourhood.

The Danger of Monoculture

When you build a development consisting entirely of identical apartments, you create a social and commercial monoculture. If a building only has expensive three-bedroom penthouses, it becomes an exclusive enclave of wealthy downsizers. If it only has compact one-bedroom units, it operates like a transient hotel for young professionals and short-term renters. In both scenarios, the building lacks the friction, vibrancy, and incidental support networks of a real neighbourhood. It lacks a soul. Commercially, the monoculture forces you to compete against yourself. If you release 40 identical 2-bedroom apartments to the market at once, you are flooding your own micro-economy. Buyers have no urgency to commit because there are 39 other identical options available in the same building.

"You don't just sell out faster because you offer different price points; you sell out faster because people inherently want to live in a vibrant, diverse neighbourhood."

The Commercial Case for Diversity

De-risking off-the-plan sales requires capturing the widest possible cross-section of the market. When Andrew and Mark designed Terrace House and ParkLife, they deliberately included a highly complex mix of housing types.They included expansive, three-bedroom family homes. They included standard one and two-bedroom apartments. But crucially, they also introduced the Teilhaus—spatially brilliant micro-apartments that optimise awkward floorplate areas to maximise total project yield, while providing an accessible entry point for single-income households, independent buyers, and essential workers who are typically ignored by the traditional market.

By diversifying the product, we diversified the sales funnel. We weren't reliant on just one buyer profile. If the investor market cooled, our owner-occupier downsizers kept the sales ticking. If families were hesitant, the Teilhaus units drove momentum. This intentional variety is a primary reason why both of these projects achieved 100% sell-outs before construction commenced. When you offer distinct, varied floorplans, you create scarcity within the development. A buyer isn't choosing one of fifty identical boxes; they are securing the only 3-bedroom, north-facing terrace in the building. Scarcity drives urgency.

Designing a Vertical Village

The commercial benefits of diverse floorplans are immediate, but the long-term impact on the community is profound.

A healthy, resilient suburb naturally contains a mix of people: grandparents, young couples, single creatives, and noisy toddlers. A healthy apartment building should be no different. When you mix a 3-bedroom family apartment next to a 1-bedroom Teilhaus, you mix demographics. This is where the architecture actively engineers social cohesion. The retiree in the 2-bedroom apartment becomes friends with the young family down the hall. The single professional connects with the established couple on the communal roof deck. Diverse housing types create a genuine "vertical village" where residents support one another, share resources, and form long-term bonds. We are implementing this exact philosophy at scale with our current and upcoming projects, like Hope & Autumn and Thornbury House. We prioritise diverse housing mixes because we know that a building filled with different types of people is inherently safer, friendlier, and more commercially resilient than a building filled with identical demographics.

Community is Commercial

For developers, the ultimate realisation is that community and commerce are not competing interests. They are intertwined.

In today's highly researched market, buyers are looking for a place to belong. When a project is designed to foster a diverse, inclusive community, it generates organic word-of-mouth marketing. It creates a waiting list of buyers who want to buy into the culture of the building. The era of copy-pasting the "optimal" floorplan is over. If we want to solve the housing crisis, build better urban environments, and clear our presale hurdles with speed, we have to design for everyone.

For developers and government agencies delivering medium and high-density housing today, the biggest risk is on the spreadsheet. Construction costs are volatile, but the true project-killer is time. The longer it takes to hit off-the-plan presale targets, the longer capital is tied up, the higher the holding costs escalate, and the harder it becomes to secure cost-effective senior debt.

In a market saturated with generic apartments that struggle to find buyers, the traditional model of "build it, render it, and hope the PR agency can sell it" is broken. Buyers are cynical. They want design integrity, community and sustainability. I know this, because until recently, I sat in your chair. Before becoming Managing Director at Austin Maynard Architects, I was on the client side. I was part of the development team behind Slate House in Brighton. When I appointed Andrew Maynard and Mark Austin to design that project, I was looking for world-class architecture. What I actually got was a de-risked balance sheet. The commercial power of this firm was undeniable. After Slate House sold out, I joined Austin Maynard Architects. Here is what I learned from the developer’s side of the table, and why partnering with Austin Maynard Architects is less commercial risk.

"When developers look at architectural fees, they need to weigh them against the velocity of sales."

Acquiring a 20-Year Sales Funnel

For over two decades, Austin Maynard Architects has built a global reputation for designing award-winning, bespoke single residential homes. But there is a commercial reality to bespoke architecture: the vast majority of our audience over the last 20 years couldn't afford a custom $3 million+ house. By stepping into the multi-residential space, we uncorked two decades of pent-up demand. When you bring Austin Maynard Architects onto a project, you are delivering an accessible product to an audience that has been waiting for a thoughtfully designed home they can actually afford. This is a highly educated, pre-qualified buyer pool that trusts the brand.

"We bring the buyers with us."

We don't have to rely on traditional real estate marketing because we are our own distribution channel. Between our firm's direct channels (99,000+ followers) and Andrew’s personal presence (@maynardarchitect, 86,000+ followers), our digital footprint is staggering. Archimarathon alone reaches over 930,000 highly engaged users across multiple platforms, 549,000 of which are on Instagram. Combined, you are tapping into a direct, trusted line of communication with an audience well over one million strong. We don't have to pay PR agencies to find cold leads; we already have a warm relationship with your future residents.

Defying a Sluggish Market

The velocity of sales fundamentally changes the cost of capital. I experienced this firsthand. When we launched Slate House, it was a test of the market south of the Yarra River. While competing apartment buildings in the immediate area languished with surplus stock, Slate House achieved a 100% sell-out.

This bankability is built into our firm's DNA. Because Andrew and Mark also acted as the developers for Terrace House and ParkLife, they understand firsthand that design must serve the feasibility. Both of those self-developed projects achieved 100% sell-outs during the presale phase, with the vast majority secured well before construction commenced.In today's incredibly tough market, where very little is selling (whether built, under construction, or unbuilt), our current multi-residential projects, ParkLife 2 and Thornbury House, are selling with ease.

"The appetite for high-quality, architecturally rigorous, fossil-fuel-free housing exists everywhere, provided the brand delivering it has genuine credibility."

The demand we generate isn't limited to local owner-occupiers. We receive inquiries from buyers and investors across Australia and Asia, requesting that we bring our model of multi-residential housing to their cities. For developers, this means tapping into a broader pool of interstate and international capital that is specifically looking for the security of an established architectural brand.

De-Risking the Future of Housing

Delivering the "Missing Middle" and increasing urban density shouldn't be a financial gamble. When you design for community, prioritise uncompromised sustainability, and operate with total transparency, the market responds. I joined Austin Maynard Architects because I saw the spreadsheet. Our track record proves that high-quality, sustainable architecture fundamentally de-risks the project. We clear the presale hurdles, we accelerate senior debt coverage, and we deliver homes that people are actually queuing up to live in. Stop relying on PR agencies to find your buyers. Let’s talk about the feasibility of your next site.

Australia is caught in a housing paradox. We desperately need more homes, yet we are paralysed by a false dichotomy: we either push urban sprawl to the absolute fringes, or we drop generic boxes into our established suburbs. Unsurprisingly, local communities fight the latter tooth and nail. This friction has created the crisis of the "Missing Middle" – the severe lack of medium-density housing (like townhouses, low-rise apartments, and duplexes) that bridges the gap between the detached suburban house and the high-rise tower.

For decades, the development industry has complained about NIMBYism and planning red tape. But as architects, we need to be honest: communities often fight density because, historically, the density they’ve been served is overbearing, clinical, and completely ignorant of the local context. At Austin Maynard Architects, we are actively building the blueprint for how to solve it. We believe you can dramatically increase housing density in established suburbs – and achieve the yields required to make projects viable – while actually enhancing the character of the street. Here is how we are doing it.

The Problem: The Blunt-Force Approach to Yield

Let's be clear: we are not anti-yield. For the housing crisis to be solved, and for projects to get off the ground, developers need density and financial viability. Yield is a non-negotiable metric. The problem isn't yield itself; it’s the blunt-force approach the industry often takes to achieve it. When a developer acquires two side-by-side suburban blocks, the default financial model usually dictates a singular, massive, boundary-to-boundary structure. To maximise internal square meterage, the building becomes a square, flat-roofed box wrapped in cheap render or corporate-looking glass. This approach ignores the fundamental grain of the suburb. It strips away gardens, removes the "domestic" feel, and alienates the neighbours. It’s exactly why councils and residents reject these proposals.

True density means intelligent subdivision of space that achieves high yield while respecting the visual language of the neighbourhood.

The Blueprint: Slate House, Brighton

To prove that you can achieve commercial yield while navigating the most protective, heritage-rich suburbs, we designed Slate House in Brighton. Brighton is synonymous with large, single-dwelling homes, and introducing apartments here required extreme architectural sensitivity.

Instead of building one massive block across the site, we deployed a completely different strategy to deliver 14 high-end, sustainable homes across just two standard blocks –achieving the required density without the backlash.

• Breaking Down the Mass: We divided the development into three separate architectural forms. By stepping the buildings back and creating distinct volumes, we avoided the appearance of a single, landed spaceship. We hit our numbers, but the street sees a sympathetic roofline.

• Contextual Materiality: We conducted an audit of the surrounding heritage buildings. The dominant materials were slate, terracotta, brick, and white masonry. We used these exact, honest materials – free of toxic coatings – to wrap the new forms.

• Familiar Forms: Rather than flat, corporate roofs, we utilised pitched roofs reminiscent of the iconic local bathing boxes. The building reads as a series of small, loveable, domestic structures rather than a commercial complex.

• Engineering Community: Inside, we eradicated the depressing, hotel-style hallway. By dividing the building into three blocks, each light-filled corridor only services three front doors. It fosters micro-communities and casual neighbourly interaction, proving that dense footprints can still prioritise mental health and liveability.

Scaling the Vision: Hope & Autumn, Geelong West

The Missing Middle is about creating resilient, scalable communities in high-growth regional corridors. With our upcoming Hope & Autumn project in Geelong West, we are taking our commitment to thoughtful density to the next level. Geelong is facing immense population pressure, and we are delivering 56 homes right in the heart of the community, adjacent to Pakington Village.

• Yield with Integrity: 56 homes is a substantial and meaningful increase in local density, but it is delivered through a framework of uncompromised sustainability and neighbourhood integration.

• 100% Fossil Fuel Free: As state governments begin to phase out gas, the industry is scrambling. We are already there. Hope & Autumn is all-electric, targeting an 8+ Star average NatHERS rating.

• Climate Resilience: We are integrating serious solar, water harvesting, and expansive landscaping that benefits both the residents and the broader street.

The Call to Action for the Industry

We cannot solve the housing crisis by relying on the same blunt-force, yield-at-all-costs models that created the friction in the first place. The development industry and local planning authorities must recognise that good design is the ultimate lubricant for the planning system. When we prioritise expansive landscaping, when we use authentic materials that age gracefully, and when we break down the mass of our buildings to respect the domestic scale, density stops being a dirty word. Yield and community outcomes do not have to be mutually exclusive. At Austin Maynard Architects, we will continue to prove that the "Missing Middle" isn't missing because it's impossible to build. It’s missing because the industry hasn't tried hard enough to design it well. It’s time to raise the standard and prove that thoughtful yield is the future of our suburbs.

"No House Style assembles leading and emerging Melbourne-based furniture designers and architects whose contrasting styles are emblematic of the city’s creative spirit. Refuting mainstream design trends, these designers and architects are helping to establish a picture of contemporary Melbourne design that is independent, original, plural and expressive of contemporary issues and values."

Constellate vase (2022) by Jordan Fleming (left), and Cove chair (2022) and Echo low (2022) by Thomas Coward with Rae Rae House (2019) by Austin Maynard Architects.

Image: Tom Ross

The physical exhibition itself is designed to mirror the intimate relationship between people, spaces, and objects, bringing the curators' vision to life in a tangible way:

"No House Style comes together in an installation referencing a domestic interior – a tableaux of small rooms, or simply one – accompanied by images of residential architecture in Victoria. Under cultural examination, the work of these architects and designers, and the tastes of their clients, tell unique stories about designing and making in Melbourne now."

Having our work placed within this "tableaux" is an honour, and we are grateful to the NGV team for highlighting the independent spirit of Melbourne’s creative community.

Work/life/work balance

Andrew Maynard, 2 May 2012

It is time for architectural work practices to grow up. We must stop deluding ourselves that architectural employees are anything other than a contemporary exploited labour force. Epicurus argued that humans needed only three things in life to be happy – friends, freedom and an analysed life. All evidence indicates that Epicurus had a rather good time while he was around. Now he is dead. I wonder if Epicurus became a senior associate at Philosopher & Associates Pty Ltd before he died? Surely this was a priority. Does contemporary architectural employment deny us our happiness; our friends, freedom and the opportunity for an analysed life? Many would argue that being employed in architecture and the pursuit of happiness are irreconcilable. It can reasonably be argued that most architects, and almost all recent graduates, are working in conditions that are unhealthy, unsustainable and exploitative.

At 27, like a surprising number of architecture graduates, I cut and ran from commercial architecture. A number of my peers disappeared into graphic design, 3D rendering, fashion and retail. I did my time and mused that, “Life’s too short. I’ll start my own practice. I won’t work for another architect again.” What I didn’t know at 27 years old was how unlikely it would be that my practice would survive. (It was more luck than anything else, by far, that it did).

We all imagine working for ourselves. We become the authors of our own work, we get the credit for our work and, most importantly, we gain full control of our working conditions. After ten years I now have what could be described as a good work/life balance. My office is an old shop front on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy. I live upstairs with my eight-year-old son and my partner. At 5.30pm all staff leave the office, including myself. On some nights I will return to the office after my son has gone to sleep to play video games (mostly COD, SWTOR and BF3). On very rare occasions (perhaps six times a year) I work at night, however, this is done under very specific conditions: Firstly, I am inspired and, secondly, I want to work.

Most importantly, through planning, management and the ability to turn away bad projects, I never allow myself to be in a position where I need to work after hours. I have manufactured this situation with great difficulty over the years and outside of the norms of architectural practice. To generate this work/life balance I have opted out of the overly competitive and patriarchal environment that contemporary architectural working culture demands. My practice fills a tiny niche and I recognise that it is not financially viable for the profession as a whole to do as I do. After all, the entire profession cannot relegate itself to working almost exclusively on renos and extensions as I do. Commercial architectural firms are the biggest employers of architects and their slice of the pie continues to increase as we see mid-size practices morph and compress. The vast majority of architects will continue to be employees rather than employers.

There is a strange unspoken, yet ubiquitous, competitiveness within architecture offices. Who will leave first? Who has put in the most hours? Who looks busiest? Who gets along best with the boss? Whose timesheet is full of ‘office’ and ‘admin’ hours?

When I worked for one of Australia’s largest commercial architectural firms I deliberately ignored this internal scrutiny. I did not want to compete with my fellow employees and I did not want to be exploited by my employer. I dedicated myself to producing the best work I could within the constraints of my employment agreement. I would arrive no earlier than 8.30am. I would have a morning tea break daily. I would never work through lunch. I would try to leave at 5.30pm, ensuring that I was gone before 6pm. I would never work on weekends or public holidays.

This attitude, as expected, put me on a crash course with management. When it was clear that I was going to be uncompromising my employer became passive aggressive and easily rallied a handful of fellow employees against me. I was accused of not being a team player. I was accused of not being committed to my projects. The quiet hostility got to the point where I found it necessary to have my employment agreement front-and-centre on my desk, conveniently flipped to the page stating that my work day ceased at 5.30pm and my right to paid overtime should I work beyond this.

Eventually I surrendered to the realisation that I was very much alone in exercising my rights. At no point during informal reviews of my work and attitude was the quality or quantity of the work I produced in question. I performed my contracted task well and received compliments from fellow employees about the care and rigour of my work. There was no evidence that I did any less work than other employees. However, it became obvious that one idealistic graduate commie upstart like myself was not going to change the exploitative office culture of one of Australia’s biggest firms. So I left.

But why was my insistence to work within the time limits, protected by my employment agreement, so confronting and provocative to my employer and so threatening to a handful of fellow employees?

Working overtime for extended periods indicates a fundamental failure in planning or communication. *1

A number of unique conditions, and abundant false logic, leaves young architects exposed to exploitation. Perhaps it’s our left-of-centre university indoctrination to be egalitarian, generous and servants of society and the city? Could it be that ‘all-nighters’ are considered the norm and time management is seen as the enemy of creativity at university? It could be the illusion that one must suffer for their art. Is it simply the need to conform to an office culture? Regardless, there is the belief that architecture is a profession that demands all or nothing. We are even led to believe that we are working in an industry whose margins are so tight that its very survival is reliant on donated time of architectural employees.

These factors contribute to the ongoing exclusion of many parts of our diverse community; there are many individuals within our community who cannot donate their time due to family or other external commitments. Inclusion of these individuals outside of the architectural norm would no doubt enrich the architectural profession.Arguably the most pervasive element enabling exploitative office culture is the postmodern trickery of the contemporary working environment. Slavoj Žižek argues that modern employment tactics create the illusion that our employer is our friend. This fabrication empowers the employer while denying the employed the right to vocalise and protest dissatisfaction of their working conditions. “You’re not going to stick around and help out? I thought we were a team? I thought we were friends?”

Žižek suggests that the environment of the workplace has been twisted, using architectural devices, to manipulate employees. Kitchens, ‘break-out spaces’, lounges, free food, free coffee – he postulates that this is a postmodern sleight of hand designed to manipulate and disarm staff. By fabricating the illusion of employer as friend, the employed is denied the opportunity to protest, argue, fight, be adversarial and demand more of their working conditions. These informal spaces are political spaces of control, surveillance and manipulation. Architectural employees operate within a specific set of broken logic principles that leave them open to exploitation. We tell ourselves ;

If I work longer hours I will get promoted and paid better.
Architects are often the lowest paid person on the building site and the only ones willing to donate their leisure time for free.

I will one day start my own practice.
The proliferation of small practices and their significant cull rate illustrates a pathology unsupported by economic logic.

I’ll rise through the ranks of management.
Architects are a labour force, not a set of managers. The most insidious trick in the corporate world was to begin calling everyone a manager, executive or senior something or other. This created the illusion that everyone was on a relatively even plane with their employer.

We must suffer for our art.
We are suffering for our employers’ profit. After all, how much of your time is spent being the ‘artist’? I spend around 7% of my time being the ‘artist’. I refuse to suffer and sacrifice for all the other stuff.

Long hours make the project better.
Long hours may produce a greater quantity of information, but corporate research suggests that working long hours drastically reduces quality and soon becomes a liability.

My employer is suffering equally for the good of the project.
Each unpaid hour of overtime you work is profit to your employer. Though an employer may articulate otherwise, profit plays a fundamental role in encouraging an environment of extended working hours. If one of my team did an extra hour I could only think “thanks for that extra $210 you just gave me”.

Architectural practices cannot afford to pay overtime.
Like so many other professions, the architectural profession would adapt. It would remodel its spreadsheets. So is the nature of capitalism.

Other professions, such as law, demand extended hours – why not architecture?
Law is one of a handful of professions that has a cultural predilection for extended hours. The fundamental difference between law and architecture is that lawyers are typically paid very well.

Creativity doesn’t necessarily happen between 9am to 5pm.
How creative are you between 5.30pm and 8.30pm? Let me answer that for you; you are not creative at all, you are in fact tired, hungry and keen for a beer. You may get a burst of creative energy at 2am, but those moments are rare and fleeting and they don’t need you to be sitting in your employer’s office for them to emerge.

Once you allow yourself and the staff around you to work past your contracted period of employment you are enabling a culture of exploitation. A commercial office is an instrument to make money not art. There is a hint that gives this fact away – it’s the word ‘commercial’. Yet it is within the practice of commercial architecture that we see the greatest amount of unpaid work and we see the greatest donation of leisure time to an employer.

Deferred Happiness Syndrome and a shift to an Epicurian mode of thinking.

During my time at a commercial architecture office I anecdotally noticed specific behavioural shifts among new young employees.

• As employees worked longer hours their friends became those that they were working with. Is this because they saw their other friends less? This overlay between colleague and friend helps reinforce an office culture of extended working hours.

• Most employees trade their freedom either through a competitive desire to rise through the ranks or a conformity to office culture and the fear of being seen as an uncommitted team member.

• An analysed life. Clive Hamilton writes of the endemic nature of deferred happiness now ingrained within Australian culture: “(a) widespread propensity of Australians to persist with life situations that are difficult, stressful and exhausting in the belief that the sacrifice will pay off in the longer term”. If one worked fewer hours then perhaps one could spend more time exploring an Epicurian ‘analysed life’.

Hamilton argues that the motivations for deferring happiness are various.

• Growing aspirations for more expensive lifestyles, reflected in rapidly increasing house prices, are dominating some people’s lives. The desire to stay in this race leads many to work longer and harder, often at the cost of other aspects of their wellbeing.

• Some workers feel a powerful need to accumulate as much as they can in preparation for their retirement. This is especially prevalent among men in their forties and fifties.

• Some workers are stuck in demanding jobs because they are fearful of the consequences should they change. They become habituated to the stresses and pressures, perhaps until a health problem or some crisis at work or home forces them to consider alternatives.

Within architecture, we should be attempting to erode the competitive aspirational illusion of grinding our way through the ranks or aspiring to all working for ourselves.

Instead we collectively need to start concentrating on securing fair and reasonable working conditions that support a healthy, rewarding and creative lifestyle. One can and should argue that selling one’s daylight hours to an employer must be fully rewarded and no part should be offered for free.

Currently architectural employees appear to have two options of attaining a good work/life balance:
(1) work for oneself and take the very real risk that one may go broke at anytime
(2) leave the profession.

These issues obviously threaten the long-term relevance of the profession. Unsustainable work practices and poor working conditions are a significant part of the overall viability of the profession into the future.

Quite simply, if you are paid to work until 5.30pm then stop work at 5.30pm. You may be able to work for much longer, you may be keen to work longer, you may dream of becoming an associate or one day a director, but along the way you are contributing to an exploitative and exclusive work environment.

"There is a lot of interesting residential architecture coming out of Australia at the moment, and this practice is a leader in this field. The firm has developed an impressive and diverse portfolio of houses at different scales, all of which have a strong sense of identity. These are homes that people would really want to live in.” Dezeen Jury citation

Upon receiving the award Austin Maynard Architects founding director Andrew Maynard said “Mark and I have long been dismissive of the myth of an individual genius, or the star architect. Architecture is a team sport, requiring input from a diverse and skilful team. We have put just as much effort into creating the best team as we have in creating outstanding architecture. The ARCHITECTURE STUDIO OF THE YEAR award is recognition of how strong our team is, and illustrates how a studio of only ten people can achieve so much. When you work with Austin Maynard Architects you work with the A Team, always.”

Happiness, fun, friends, family, ethics and sustainability are the core pillars of Austin Maynard Architects (AM.A).Since launching in 2002, the firm has built an exciting and diverse portfolio and gained a reputation for boundless creative energy and designs that are well-conceived, playful and edgy. AM.A is not inhibited by building type but rather navigates residential, retail and commercial arenas and is rich in envelope-pushing conceptual designs.

AM.A explore architecture with enthusiasm; treating each project as a unique challenge, and working directly with clients and occupants, to offer individual possibilities and thoughtful responses to people, brief and place.