USYD Architecture, Design and Planning Graduate Exhibition 2025

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On ground, a bank of garage studios occupies the western edge, with large vertical bifold doors opening up onto the adjacent laneway. When open, these doors help to define this space as an extension of the building, as well as acting as a signifier of its public use. These spaces are intended to be occupied by more community-oriented programs, such as markets, block parties, festivals, and performances, providing a platform for Auburn to accommodate a series of uses.

Within The Garage, there is just as much emphasis placed on the third space as there is on the garage itself, with each being allocated an equivalent amount of floor area. The third space functions as an area for cooperative activities; a space informed, programmed, and inhabited by the community and the tasks they undertake within the building.

The Garage

Auburn, much like the rest of Australia since colonial settlement, has been defined by the typology of the single suburban home. A detached house, with a big backyard, a front yard, large living spaces, and a garage. Spaces that are synonymous with Australian culture. As density increases across Sydney, the suburban landscape is slowly stripped of these defining characteristics. Private outdoor spaces shrink or vanish, swapped out for balconies and shared courtyards. Living spaces half in size. And the garage, a space open to play, creativity, and experimentation, disappears into basements or is lost entirely. It is the loss of the garage that this thesis narrows in on, tracing its emergence, domestication, and eventual disappearance, examining these stages as both an architectural and cultural condition. It ultimately asks the question; as Sydney moves towards a housing model that overlooks the garage, how can we design public spaces that facilitate the same unprescribed freedom this typology provides.

The Garage