Udari Gardihewa

Research question: How can residential housing be made more flexible and transitory to help reduce the issue of staff shortages within Apollo Bay?
Annually, the Great Ocean Roads receives more tourists than Uluru and the Great Barrier reef combined (Mantesso, 2021). This rapid growth of tourism over the last thirty years has encouraged many locals to convert their rental properties into Airbnb listings in towns such as Apollo Bay. Whilst this yields high profit for the locals, it has caused a decline in the rental market and as such a decline in visiting workers. With the onset of COVID-19 and the looming threat of bushfires, this slow emergency calls for an urgent response (Anderson 2019).

The Open/Closed house will attempt to address the wicked problem of tourism in Apollo Bay. Through the use of transitory architectural elements to explore the conditions between private and public space the project seeks to remedy the discord between the tourist and the permanent locals. The project will also explore methods of increasing the rental market and as such increasing workers and alleviating stress on locals.

Through the spaces specified in the preliminary brief, such as the bedroom with three bunk beds and the self-contained apartment and the addition of a cafe space, the project will explore how residential housing can begin to resolve issues of accommodation and in turn resolve greater issues of tourism.