Photo by Peter Clarke.

With a promise that every project would have fresh air and windows in each room, Jeremy McLeod founded the Melbourne-based practice Breathe Architecture almost twenty years ago. Since, the firm has been applying their concept of environmentally and socially sustainable urban design to a range of commercial and residential projects. More recently, McLeod and his team have begun cultivating their own housing projects, changing the model for multi-residential development in Australia. Frustrated with the way architecture was being dictated by developers, market forces, and financial structures, they started the Nightingale Housing movement to support, promote and advocate for high-quality housing that is environmentally sustainable, financially affordable, and socially inclusive.

Here, we talk with Lola Digby-Diercks, the Business Development Lead at Breathe Architecture and Nightingale, about the firm's innovative practices and the differences they are making within residential development, and the profession at large.

How many employees?

17 of us altogether.

What was the motivation to start Breathe Architecture?

Breathe Architecture has been running for almost 20 years. Jeremy McLeod, whose our design director and founder, used to work for other practices that really specialized in high-rise towers—pretty mean and aggressive projects. Through his work there, he really reflected on what change he wanted to have on the built world and what sort of projects he was not only passionate about, but also what projects were best for people and the community. That’s why Breathe was set up.

The name came from the idea that all these high-rise buildings don’t actually have openable windows in every room. They’re really big heaps of glass and we can’t get any fresh air into a lot of the levels. So with Breathe, he made this promise when he started the practice that all the projects would have fresh air and windows in each room, which sounded rudimentary at the time but clearly, years later, the name’s stuck.

We have shifted our focus a little bit over the last few years particularly with our work with Nightingale and we are doing bigger projects and more multi-residential projects. We’re still very selective about the work we take on and always questioning whether it will benefit the community and what will be the outcome.

Since you mentioned Nightingale, let’s switch focus for a second so that you can you give a quick overview of hat.

We are a housing provider which was set up as a response to what we are seeing a lot of in Melbourne and Sydney and all around Australia, which is developer-led projects. Their main outcome is often financial gain and therefore, a lot of the architecture and quality is lost. The experience of the resident or user isn’t considered as much when money is the goal.

So, Nightingale Housing was set up to respond to this. It is an architect-led at-cost housing provider. We work as an office to support architects that gain a Nightingale license and want their own projects actualized without a developer. Essentially, the funding models are quite different initially because we need to get funds through ethical investors or through other sources. That is slowly changing as banks become more aware of what we do and it's a little easier. Particularly at the start though, when they thought “Oh, what is this Nightingale thing,” it was harder.

Making sure that we respond to the community that's already there but also the residents that are moving in is really important.

In a nutshell, we deliver at cost housing. Whatever it costs us to build and run the project is what we sell them for. We don’t make a profit as Nightingale Housing. We have four key pillars that are prevalent on all projects. One is environmental sustainability. Then there is social sustainability—we work really hard to make sure that the buildings are limited between 20 to 40 people because after that, we’ve found people sort of lose track of who everyone is. Then we have community sustainability, where we work with tenants who are going to be on the ground floor. We look at what does that neighboring community or street need in their area. It's not always just another cafe; it might be a child care facility or a little grocery shop or a cafe or a co-working space. That's another piece of our work: making sure we get the balance right; making sure that we respond to the community that's already there but also the residents that are moving in is really important.

How does it work for the tenants?

We are a support system for architects but also for our resident waitlists. We have a waitlist that people register to and they identify what postcodes they’d like to live in or suburbs or areas, which then informs us on what sites to purchase or what sites to look to purchase and where we build. The whole process is really different from traditional development. The residents are constantly kept informed—we have a series of information sessions where the projects are updated and presented and the financial model shown. Everything is really transparent. We have a pre-allocation to key service workers—so nurses, teachers, carers. We’ve also just committed an allocation for a community housing provider, that has their own group of people. The rest of the apartments are then balloted completely randomly.

The folks that have been coming to our information sessions, they’ll be given all the information about all the apartments in their price points—their pros, their cons, everything you could possibly want to know. They then get a balance sheet which has every available apartment listed and their fixed price point. They then literally ballot 1-to-5 or 20—however many they want to potentially purchase. We then draw a ballot on a set day and allocate each of those apartments. What happens to date is 100% allocation within a day which is again, quite different to traditional apartments which might take weeks or months or sadly years to sell out.

What have you guys found removing the developer from the process affords you as architects?

They'll engage an architect to work on the project but it's not the architect making the design decisions, it's led by a developer 

We learned a few lessons before we started Nightingale and that was that when developers are involved, they run the project, they call the shots. Often they'll engage an architect to work on the project but it's not the architect making the design decisions, it's led by a developer and them telling you what will sell and what they need. Unfortunately, what we've seen is there’s often some really amazing Australian architects working on these projects and their voice is completely lost in the process. They just become, you know, a CAD monkey or someone to churn out the drawings and get the approval but their opinion and something they're very good at is often forgotten.

So, one thing is that architects lead the project. Their very well educated decisions are listened to. Another thing is that we cap our profits at 15 percent on a project, which is quite a bit lower than a standard development. Here in Australia, developments, to satisfy the banks and lending, they need to meet at least 20 percent profit and anything extra is normally a nice bit of cash that goes back into their pockets. We cap it and everything's put back in the projects so we don't take it at all which is quite different.

Another thing I guess, it's quite interesting is that we also have a small preallocation for the project team. For anyone working on the project, up to 10% of the building—Nightingale 1 has 20 apartments so up to 2 apartments—are preallocated to part of the architectural team. What this means is that they actually become really invested in the project because they'll be living in it. There's a further incentive to deliver a really wonderful building but also long term, it means that they're using it and we've got other designers and friends and family coming through the building, unlike a normal developer where they sort of make their money, leave and start on the next site. There's a lot of little systems in place purposefully to try and work through what we see is the downfalls of a stock standard development. We also have 20% allocation to a community housing provider and up to 20% to key service workers, Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islanders, and people with disabilities.

What have some of the hurdles been?

The biggest hurdles have been access to land because we are trying to deliver on affordability. We normally can't pay the same as what a developer can pay because we are capping a bunch of the finances to deliver affordability to the residents. Prices in Melbourne and Sydney are absolutely crazy at the moment and it does cut us out of a lot of options. Access to finance has been difficult in the past though it's getting easier with time and more awareness but it's still not as easy as a normal development. As a practice or as an organization, I guess it's just informing people of why these buildings and projects are different. We don't work to convince anyone; we don't have a marketing team; we don't build display suites; we don't have a very big team at all—there's only a couple of us. But sometimes it's a bit of a learning process to explain to people why one of our projects has no car parking, or why all our projects are fossil fuel free. There is no gas pumped into our buildings—explaining why that's important and what that means for them long term is a good challenge, but it's just different because we're not adhering to the status quo of building. We're still quite young as an organization. We've only been up or running for a couple of years and there's just a lot of education that needs to happen particularly for banks and lenders and those getting involved.

Can you expand on some of the ways you integrate environmental sustainability into the design of the buildings?

There are a couple of things we do. Some of them are big simple moves like no gas is plumbed in. Our buildings aren't very cheap to construct and that's intentional because we do specify really high quality materials. Also windows or double glazing when it's needed on the right orientation, things like shading, lots of vegetation—which is really great for people's health but also cool spaces down a couple of degrees. Then as part of our financial piece, we really work on reducing unnecessary materials which people often think is an aesthetic thing. It looks really cool and funky—and it does—but it's also just about eliminating products that we don't need. We try not to put in drywall because it's not really needed. We've got thermal mass, we've got concrete, but also it's just another material, another cost. It needs to be painted, it needs to be glued and whatever else that often has a lot of toxins. The building has such a high star rating, which is a national star rating where they rate buildings based on their environmental performance. The required minimum is pretty low, which is what most buildings adhere to, and that means that they're not really running that well. They often need air conditioning, heating everything else. Ours are really high and we keep trying to push it higher and therefore we've actually been able to strip out things like the air conditioning, which obviously is a cost saving but also as a health saving. And then it becomes about educating the residents on on how to cool and heat their place. We've got a heat pump system that provides all the hot water and heating to the buildings. We try and achieve a certain economy of scale in what we do. We've got worm farms, we've bees up here on the roof in Nightingale one. We work to educate residents on recycling and food waste so that even the amount of food and waste coming in and out of the building is heavily reduced. I think that's a really simple but interesting thing that we do. The residents organize little education sessions or they'll bring in an expert on recycling—it sounds kind of funny but it works and you know people can just make small changes to the way that they live here and as a whole. Pretty incredible.

We also only purchase green power, it's a carbon offset. Just looking at the electricity that comes in and out of the building, we've got solar PV here, we've got rainwater tanks, we've got productive gardens where people can grow their own herbs and veggies. We don't have any individual laundries in any of the apartments. We have a really beautiful rooftop shared laundry. Instead of 20 laundries and washing machines running, there's five or six big industrial ones. It is all these small initiatives that piece together to make quite a quite an amazing building or system. Every next project will keep pushing and work out how to do better and as technology improves that's where we'll you know keep pushing it.

How would you describe your design approach?

We really like to work on meaningful projects that benefit either the residents or the clients or the community. Sustainability is a huge part of our practice so much like Nightingale given that they've got the same founder and director. Sustainability is huge for us at Breathe and we won't really take on any projects that don't have a sustainability awareness. We're not we're not prescriptive about what they do but we do like to work with clients that are open to incorporating as much as they can. And then it's making sure we work with clients whose values are aligned, that love what we do and vice versa. The single residential homes that we work on—are those clients doing amazing things for the city or for the world and how can we help them and give back to them. And the larger projects it's about how can we get in and turn it into a better building, a better outcome for the street or that area. Our team is small-ish but extremely well educated and well thought-out. We're a very strategic practice. There is 17 of us and I would say there's 17 different personalities and skill sets. I think unlike other practices when we take on a project we sit down and work out who will be best on that project from our team. It'll often go through most of the team at some point and we really work as a whole practice on projects. It's not very often that one or two people we work on a project by themselves. That becomes a large part of what we do.

What are some other projects that you think are exemplary of the firm’s approach?

In terms of hospitality, there's Transformer Restaurant, which we did in Fitzroy here in Melbourne. It's a vegetarian, plant-based restaurant, which again is a big tick in our books. But, it's fine dining so it's a pretty beautiful project but also a way of showing people that you can eat vegetarian food and it's still delicious and looks amazing. And it's in a really lovely setting where you'd go for a date night or special occasion. We've started to work more and more with developers at Breathe only because when we get in the room we're able to help pivot and change the project from something that was pretty unsustainable to something that's far more sustainable than what they were going to build. It's a really important those projects because that's where we can say we have a huge impact and is a pretty incredible feat to be part of. We've been working on a bunch of offices that's really about making sure that we that we have a great outcome for the workers or their staff. How can you incorporate more natural light, ventilation, greenery. Thinking about people sitting in offices for eight hours a day 40 hours a week, how can we make sure that their days are a bit better and got access to something that is normally ignored. Things like that, there's a lot of homes that we've done where the clients are taking in asylum seekers and working as carers and doing incredible things to their community and that's what we're really passionate about, those clients. How can we give them an amazing home because that becomes their retreat after they've had these pretty incredible days working on some really hard stuff.

The founder, Jeremy, has said he makes a point of employing students straight out of university.

For six months or a year teaching them, he actually sees how they work, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they respond to things

I'd say probably half our crew at the moment has been here since graduating. A few of us, myself included, have actually been taught by Jeremy at Uni. I think that's something he really likes because for six months or a year teaching them, he actually sees how they work, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they respond to things in a pretty stressful environment finishing your masters degree. I think it's something he really likes doing but also really works. We now run a studio Jeremy and I but also two of our colleagues for Melbourne University each semester. For the last two years, we've continued employing people, the top student from the class. I think it's a nice basis because you've already sort of worked together in a different environment. You come into Breathe which is obviously a lot more fast paced and you're thrown into the real world but you've already got a relationship established. I think also when you're out of Uni, you are quite fresh on your perspective and I think coming here it's pretty incredible practice to be part of. Without sort of having gone to another practice before, you have an opportunity to sort of inform them and their values. For me personally, if I move to a different practice, I would find it very difficult if they didn't have the same values as what we have here at Breathe. It's very particular work that we work on.

For most of our staff, it's the same thing. They've either always wanted to work here and ended up here or they've come here straight from Uni or been taught by Jeremy and it's very hard to turn back. Our practice is also really different. It's mainly females. I think we're 75 percent percent female. Jeremy's a male a design director but our other director Bonnie Herring and our associate Fairley Batch, both females and then underneath them is all of us. Mainly female led and run here, which is quite interesting and nice. That's not intentional, it just seems to be every time we do a hiring round the females have stronger applications. It's a bit of a point of difference without being intentional.

What are the benefits?

I think the intention was to always be small and actually, at 17, we're bigger than we had planned for. We always had this sweet spot at about 12 staff or thereabouts. It's a really tight knit group so we spend a lot of time together working but also a lot of time together doing other activities or we'll share a meal together every couple of weeks. I think that's something that's quite unique to a small practice that you obviously couldn't do when you've got you know 30 or 40 or more people. It also means we can be across everything; I help run projects and work closely with Jeremy and with that number of people, although it's hard some weeks, you can still be quite informed on each project that's in the practice. You get to learn everyone really well and how they work on projects. That's really helpful when we're delegating work or working out how we best structure the next project. A major benefit is how we work as a practice: how we come together, that everyone's really close-knit and genuinely friends. It's also about how we undertake our work. We often have five six seven eight people working on one project all at different times, in different stages, but there's something really nice that everyone at some point has contributed with their own skill sets.