Can apartment living enhance our quality of life?

Posted on 20 August, 2018

Reading the online forums of Melbourne renters and apartment-hunters is certainly illuminating.

While lurking there you will find lamentations of soul-crushing living in windowless rooms illuminated by pinprick light wells, dark and dingy corridors with “saddleback” designs, and bedrooms with translucent walls that steal light from the adjacent rooms.

You’ll read stories of inspections of an apartment so small that the real estate agent must stand in the hallway. Of apartments where possessions must be stored on balconies or stowed in fire hydrant cupboards. And of kitchens that can’t accommodate a standard fridge. “Caravan living with a fixed address” as one keyboard warrior puts it.

Now, a new study being undertaken by RMIT and the University of Western Australia, Optimising apartment design policy to equitably enhance mental health, is investigating whether design policies for apartments influence mental health and wellbeing.

The study’s chief investigator Sarah Foster has said the study is timely and intersects with conversations around density and health. “In promoting density, you need to think how you’re developing that density and the sorts of places people are going to live in and spend much of their time,” Dr Foster said.

Dr Foster’s work comes at a time when more and more of us are taking up apartment living. Ten per cent of Australians now call an apartment home, says the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and we have one occupied apartment for every five freestanding houses.

But we also have a growing body of evidence that poor building design – lack of natural light and fresh air, restrictive layouts and insufficient space, and poor acoustics and visual privacy – play havoc with human health and wellbeing.

You may not live in an apartment, but I bet you know someone who does. And with one million adults experiencing depression over the course of the year, building places that are good for mental health should be everyone’s business.

In Melbourne, new design standards have put an end to “dog box” apartments with borrowed light, windowless rooms and saddleback designs – where a window to a room is located at the end of a long corridor. The draft design guidelines were introduced to address research finding that 60 per cent of apartments recently constructed in Melbourne were of low quality.

The ACT doesn’t have design guidelines and many in the industry suggest the bad habits of Melbourne are drifting into Canberra. The ACT Government is currently looking at the possibility of apartment design guidelines for future development – something that would be a positive step for our growing city.

Apartments can be great places to live. I live in one myself, and love it for all the usual reasons including low maintenance, high security, being part of a close-knit community and easy access to great amenities, all within walking distance.

The worldwide wellness movement is certainly doing its best to redefine healthy living. Luxury apartments in some of the world’s big cities now boast more than marble benchtops and Gaggenau appliances. Think green wall herbariums and purified air, fresh kale smoothies from your own private juicing station, shower heads that spritz vitamin C to eliminate ‘residual chlorine’ and high-tech circadian lighting that supports mind and mood.

Meanwhile, some people just want to wake up in a bedroom with a window. Doesn’t sound like too much to ask.