What is Bluefield Housing?

‘Bluefield Housing’ is both a land definition and an infill housing model, each created by Damian Madigan as an extension to the widely-understood definitions of Greenfield, Brownfield and Greyfield Housing.

As a land definition, Bluefield refers to established suburbs of a city without stated densification policies or targets. As a housing model, the Bluefield approach sees existing housing stock and landscape retained and incorporated into new infill housing developments as an alternative to Knock-Down-Rebuild (KDR) development. Based upon the discoveries of his 2016 ‘Alternative Infill’ PhD thesis and follow-on design research projects, Bluefield Housing was first defined and described in Damian’s shortlisted design competition entry for the AA Prize for Unbuilt Work 2021.

At its heart, Bluefield Housing is about increasing housing diversity and choice while retaining and enhancing neighbourhood character: infill that is low scale, low intensity but high impact.

Existing urban housing policy in Australia largely falls into three distinct categories:

Greenfield Housing, where undeveloped land (most often on a city’s fringes) is developed for housing for the first time, extending suburbia;
Brownfield Housing, where redundant non-residential land is converted to residential use, often at a medium- to high-density scale; and
Greyfield Housing, coined by Professor Peter Newton in 2010 to describe the middle suburbs, where ageing housing stock is demolished and replaced with new medium-density housing on subdivided or consolidated allotments.

Each of these models, along with transit corridor apartment development, aim for density increases without negatively affecting the more established and character-laden parts of a city. However, these older ‘no-go’ suburbs nonetheless continue to face character and amenity pressures through ad-hoc redevelopment, whilst the avoidance of strategic change leaves them homogenised.

Bluefield Housing distinguishes itself from established housing models in four ways:

It retains existing housing stock as the vital cues to new housing.
It denies sub-division, instead designing the site holistically as a single entity.
It creates additional housing through the familiar patterns of domestic alterations and additions.
It co-locates the housing around large high-quality shared gardens, either retaining mature landscape or providing deep root soil zones for the planting of trees and gardens.

Damian Madigan - greenfields to bluefields diagram

Why ‘Blue’field? Associated with calmness, stability and tradition, blue represents the perceived immutability of established suburbs, while ‘blue chip’ acknowledges the values – both financial and emotional – in play.

The Bluefield Housing approach, underpinned by conceptually rigorous and multi-layered design research investigations, sees single allotments in older suburbs sensitively densified by using the tropes of suburban alterations and additions – the mainstay of practice for so many architects and a vital contributor to the global construction industry. Rather than reading a site as divisible into pre-determined minimum allotments, a Bluefield approach treats the existing housing, new additions and private open space holistically, offering opportunities for ageing-in-place, working from home, build-to-rent, multi-generational and cooperative living in established suburbs where housing diversity is elusive, yet so desperately needed.

Design research projects that utilise the Bluefield Housing model include:

Alternative Infill PhD thesis, where the model was first developed and tested,
Established Manors Missing Middle Design Competition project, where the model was tested beyond Adelaide,
Cohousing for Ageing Well, where the model was applied to single allotments for the first time and used to illustrate the Bluefield Housing definition in the 2021 Unbuilt Work competition entry, and
The Rightsize Service, where the model was applied to the terrace house typology.
Fourflex - LA Low-Rise, where the model was internationalised and linked to a strategic funding model rewarding the achievement of key design principles.

Damian is currently working with the South Australian State Government on policy development to determine if the Bluefield Housing model can become a form of permitted infill development under the new state-wide Planning and Design Code

download the Bluefield Housing AA Prize for Unbuilt Work 2021 competition entry

Recommended citation: Madigan, Damian. "Bluefield Housing: Shortlisted Competition Entry, AA Prize for Unbuilt Work 2021." Melbourne: Architecture Australia, 2020. https://architecturemedia.com/events/aaunbuilt2021/