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https://www.nevertoosmall.com While we're still social distancing, we were able to capture another episode of Never Too Small in Melbourne. We'll be sharing more of our usual episodes as restrictions lift.

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Nightingale 2 is a continuation of the revolutionary sustainable and low footprint apartment project, designed by Six Degrees as an affordable, vertical community; connected to the streets around it. The 51m2 apartment removes less frequently used parts of the home to communal spaces, creating hubs for interaction and community building. The homes living room functions as living, kitchen and storage, the reoccurring form ply joinery helping it blend into the home. With an additional box built into the window allowing it server as a dining space. Built to be living in, rather than as an investment, Nightingale 2 focuses on making itself a home. Rather than built for investment, Nightingale 2 is designed as a long term, sustainable home within vibrant community.

Nightingale 2.0 is designed by Six Degrees Architects and delivered in collaboration between HIP V. HYPE and Six Degrees Architects in accordance with the Nightingale Housing Values.

Nightingale Housing @nightingale.housing
Six Degrees Architects @sixdegreesarchitects
HIP V. HYPE’s @hipvhype

#smallapartment #architecture #interiordesign

Project Name: Nightingale 2
Architect: https://www.nightingalehousing.org/

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Produced by https://newmac.co
Creator: Colin Chee
Director: Travis Crosbie
Producer: Luke Clark
Camera: Travis Crosbie
Editor: Colin Chee
Music: A New Deep by Dear Gravity.
Transcript
00:13Nightingale 2 is located in Fairfield on the railway line. It comprises of 20 apartments
00:20and three shop fronts on the ground. Nightingale is a model of housing delivery. The model
00:27essentially tries to create essentially housing that is affordable, that has a high sustainability
00:34factor and is designed as a home rather than as an investment product. With the project one
00:44of the key drivers really was this idea of trying to create a vertical community. The
00:50open walkways creates an active and dynamic street interface. If you have connection between
00:55the levels through that open walkway then you can see other people. You have a connection
00:59with the street as well and you have a connection with nature with the planting around the open
01:03walkways. Then you've immediately created somewhere where you're much more likely to stop and have
01:07a chat with your neighbour. In relation to community spaces there's also of course the rooftop garden.
01:13And the rooftop garden has both a productive garden in it and also a barbecue, an outdoor fireplace and
01:20space to eat. What we try and do with these sorts of spaces is to create outdoor rooms, pockets so
01:27they
01:27can be enjoyed by more than one group that goes up there. We collect our rainwater and we use a
01:33heat pump
01:34for all our hot water. The building also has 20 kilowatts of solar power on the roof. This can possibly
01:42be
01:42expanded in the future. One of the things we do in Nottingham projects generally is that we give the
01:49most amount of area we can to live in and we get rid of the laundry for example and put
01:54that into a
01:55shared laundry. So which is another incidental meeting space where you bump into your neighbours.
02:02So we're sitting in a one-bedroom apartment. We get light from the north so it gets lovely morning
02:08lights and then light throughout the day but we also get ventilation through the apartments particularly
02:13in these apartments which are very well sealed but are not air conditioned. They can open up windows and
02:19get cross ventilation which is very important in the Melbourne context. When you first walk into the
02:23apartment you walk across a collier mat, you're underneath a timber soffit ceiling and then you walk in
02:31across the threshold and you're gridded with recycled timber flooring, exposed concrete ceilings and then
02:41a simple pallet for the joinery which is essentially form ply. It has a nice texture to it, it's relatively
02:46inexpensive
02:47and it comes pre-sealed.
02:52The living space is both a living room, lounge room and kitchen. It's a single bed apartment.
02:57The kitchen runs along the southern wall of the living room. It has to function both as a kitchen
03:03and a storage. It's essentially made out of the form ply but there's a level of materiality to it
03:10that goes beyond that. So there's stone involved, there are brass fittings, there's a mirrored splashback
03:16which also helps to increase the perception of the size of the room. We've got some of the cabin
03:21and some of it sits behind cupboard doors which then allows the occupants to personalise the space
03:28further rather than it just being a sheer wall. We try to maximise the available space and maximise
03:36the use of the available space. So one of the key things in this apartment is the window seat which
03:43then enables the table to sit up next to it. All the windows are double glazed. We have used a
03:49European
03:49system of tilt and turn windows and they provide a fantastic thermal break and thermal seal.
03:56And likewise the mechanism for the sliding doors out to the balcony is a lift and slide which again
04:02sits the door down onto a gasket which provides a great acoustic and thermal seal.
04:09The apartment has underfloor hydronic heating which is a lovely low temperature radiant heat.
04:16The bedroom sits on the southern side away from the railway line so we've mitigated the sound as
04:22much as we can through the use of double glazing and doors which perform well acoustically.
04:28It has floor-to-ceiling cabinetry. Because we don't have suspended ceilings we've got exposed ceilings
04:34that means that we can take our joinery up all the way up to the ceiling which means there's a
04:38whole
04:38lot more storage space in there as well. The bathrooms it's quite quite a dark palette with
04:44floor-to-ceiling charcoal tiles but we have included a little bit of detail around the sink and then
04:51there's the brass fittings that will pick up what is otherwise a pretty simple palette of materials.
04:57And then when you transition back from the bathroom back out to the living space
05:00it feels like it opens up into a lighter palette again.
05:05Although we need to be careful about where money is spent we selectively I guess a level of richness
05:11into the detailing so you'll notice on the way in that there's a threshold a timber threshold that
05:15you walk across there's a lead light at the front that's sort of sensitive bespoke that the hands
05:21have crafted the building you obviously can't include these levels of expense everywhere but you
05:26can include them at key moments and that makes all the difference. I think developments like
05:31Nottingham too are important because they start to show the development community what is possible
05:36and I guess they also start to show up the idea that not everyone necessarily wants two bathrooms
05:42not everyone wants a laundry in their house they're prepared to share some of this space if it gives them
05:47a larger living space if it gives them something that's much more that has much greater amenity to them
05:51generally and they're interested in living within a community and they're interested in living sustainably.
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