Homes NSW Centre for Design

The Homes NSW Centre for Design is a collaboration between Homes NSW and the Government Architect NSW. It was established in 2018 and seeks to support a progressive culture of design within Homes NSW with direct benefits to tenants, and the communities within which social housing is located. The centre champions design leadership from the top and works with collaborators to foster a genuine concern for design at project level.

The work of the centre has included design policy development, design procurement advice, design review, systems thinking, change management and co-design processes.

Much of the work of the centre is directed internally to Homes NSW and is and not visible to the public, however key policy documents that have been delivered include:

• Good Design For Social Housing – Sets the design direction for Homes NSW.
• Design requirements – A comprehensive set of requirements that help ensure a consistently high design outcomes that distinguish social housing from market housing.
• Domestic Violence and Crisis Accommodation Function Design Brief – Provides guidance to project and design teams on culturally appropriate design principles for crisis accommodation, provides key spatial relationships and design criteria to optimise independence, safety, and wellbeing and provides guidance for the creation of places of healing for women and children.

The centre is design focussed and solutions oriented. Our work is grounded in research, collaboration and exploration. Each workstream is co-designed with Homes NSW and GANSW team members to ensure that our outcomes are purposeful, enduring and drive value.

Targeted research is undertaken and the findings are published for other social housing providers to access. Some of our recent case studies include:

The centre plays an important role in sharing design knowledge across government, departments and delivery teams. Some of the ways this is achieved is talk series and knowledge shares such as Talking Homes and quarterly Design Exchanges run internally within Homes NSW. These sessions are recorded and available to staff for professional development.