16. Alice street or struggle street?

Since the last blog post, there has been a gap in posting, and I’ve been struggling with the Alice Street project. It’s been all too easy to make excuses. I had a great chat with a good friend the other day- and there are so many places I want to take this blog, to really delve into my interests. Alice Street has been a bit of a mental roadblock, and I’m keen to break down what aspects of the project have been creating this- to move on, wrap the project up with a nicely rendered bow, and keep writing.

What’s going wrong? I haven’t been setting dedicated time to the project. While at university, or in the workplace, it’s easy to build habits and patterns (e.g. A certain environment triggers work/focus).  I’ve also set myself goals that aren’t broken down properly into achievable chunks- and work with the momentum of things that are going right.

What am I not liking? I really like the actual project and imagining a home for a family. I appreciate working on alterations and additions, as well as adaptive reuse- this work is becoming more and more common in Sydney.

The challenging part of the project for me is the fundamental reflection upon the housing market in Sydney. The property market is amongst the most unaffordable in the world. As a young Australian, I do not see any way that I could ever afford my own home in Sydney. As a young architect, this is truly saddening- I’d love to be able to build my own carbon-neutral home one day and practice what I’ve been taught. And as a member of generation “rent-forever”- I wonder about what sense of security in a home I will ever be able to have here. While studying in Germany, I was amazed by how affordable and secure rentals were, and the flow on into my overall levels of financial stress- which were greatly lessened.

Being a speculative, personal project- I have time to reflect on this, perhaps a little too much. These issues run deeply, rooted in the context of the Alice Street project. And while I really enjoy designing a beautiful space for a family, I am also aware that that same house would likely fit 5 housemates in reality, or that a family would have a 35 year mortgage for a house that they would purchase for an obscene price and have to renovate immediately as the existing house is in disrepair.

Where do I need to improve? I need to improve on my detailed breakdown of tasks. This can be time-consuming, however, it makes the actual flow-on of the project far smoother and less painful. I also need to improve on working through slowly and surely, and not getting overwhelmed by minutia- just moving forward steadily. Some ideas that I want to try are to break down the tasks in intense detail- budgeting extra time as “catchup and review” time, to check-in and readjust as required. I will also use the local libraries throughout the week to work and to sit in a different environment. And through it, rewarding myself for completing those micro chunks.

What’s going right? While this blog entry sounds quite negative, there hasn’t been total inaction. In fact, I had decided to experiment with animating a site analysis- and learning Adobe After Effects in some capacity. I was incredibly motivated in completing this, and am excited to remember that feeling- and moving forward remembering this small win* in the scheme of the project.

Here is the animated site analysis of the site:

And so, this week will be about getting those small wins, and focusing on the progress- rather than simply an end product.

Until next week,

AP

*An interesting article from Harvard Business Review- “The power of small wins”