Community

In 2007, we looked across Melbourne and saw that the housing system was broken. It was inequitable, environmentally unsustainable, it was eroding the community it was meant to serve. We thought that we should try to do something, anything to help fix this mess. We purchased the site next to Anstey station in Brunswick with the help of five of our friends, and designed Nightingale Apartments, the building that would become the inspiration for Nightingale Housing.

The impacts of the Global Financial Crisis washing across our shores in 2009 led to the cancellation of the project funding. With the finances stalled, we needed help (about $7 million worth) and Small Giants came to our aid, taking the project over and changing the name to The Commons. The project was completed in 2013 (it was still great, even though we liked the original name better).

While it won the 2014 National Architecture Award for Housing and a National Architecture Award for Sustainability, what made it special was what it meant to the people who lived there and the thousands of Melbournians that toured the building the following year. The architecture was great, but what took us by surprise was the community that formed. It was magical. Residents shared in working bees, strung carnival lights across their street, planted trees in the neighbourhood, helped each other when times were bad and celebrated together when times were good. When David Bowie died, they installed a four-storey LED lighting bolt on the façade of the building to ease the pain of commuters missing Ziggy Stardust. The list of what they achieved was unending.

This was the project that taught us that all of our work had to have community at its core.

View The Commons

Following The Commons, people started writing to us asking us to do it again. We thought about it, took a deep breath and dived in. 

With that in mind, Jeremy designed the Nightingale model, a triple bottom line housing model that focussed on people and the planet, not profit. We decided we would try again and this time, stay in control of the finances. We purchased the site across the road from The Commons in 2014, christening the project Nightingale 1. We raised investor funds from leading Melbourne architects Architecture Architecture, Austin Maynard Architects, Claire Cousins Architects, MRTN Architects, Six Degrees Architects, Wolveridge Architects, along with 17 other impact investors. 

Our vision was for a new housing system. It was about building homes, not housing as an asset class. It was about fostering community to combat rising social isolation, and designing buildings that positively tackled the issues of climate change rather than adding to the problem. It empowered architects to democratise the capital by raising equity in small chunks from people who cared about their city and wanted to harness their investment dollars for good.

Like its precursor, Nightingale 1 went on to receive a National Award for Housing and a National Award for Sustainability. It also won the Melbourne Prize but as before, it was the people that made it really special. This thing we started was important and we had to share it. The Robin Boyd Foundation helped us in this mission and in 2016 we employed one of the Nightingale 1 residents to help us write a governance model and establish a Board with the help of some of the first architects that had invested in Nightingale 1. We shared all of our intellectual property in the belief that with the help of an independent Nightingale Board, architects around Australia could take this model and reshape the future of our cities.

Enter Nightingale Housing…and the rest as they say, is history.

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The recent bushfires devastated so many communities, but none more so than Cobargo. We all remember the images of the exhausted firefighter not wanting to shake hands with our Prime Minister; we all remember the Prime Minister asking “Was it because he was tired?” and being told, “No, it’s because his house has just burnt to the ground”.

We at Breathe, like every other Australian who lived through the horrific 2019/2020 summer, wanted to do what we could to help those brave RFS firefighters who had lost their own homes defending other people’s homes and lives. To that end, we embarked on the Cobargo Santa Project.

Breathe provided pro-bono Architectural services to the brave RFS firefighter Dave and his wife Barbara. Throughout their lives, the couple have fostered over 400 children. They are kind, giving and generous people. Not only did they lose their home in the fire, they also lost their shed containing Dave’s Santa sleigh: Dave, with a beard to match, is also the Cobargo town Santa, bringing joy to the children in their community every year on Christmas.

A GoFundMe campaign funded the rebuilding of Dave’s shed and sleigh. But what Dave and Barbara needed most was a new home.

Breathe engaged with suppliers and collaborators to provide pro-bono material and appliances for the project. Among the many things donated were kitchen and laundry appliances, solar panels, solar installation, heat pump, heating and hot water plant and equipment, lighting, carpet, paint and insulation. Read more about the architectural features of this home on our project page.

Living in temporary structures with their foster children since the fires, we worked very hard to make sure that Dave and Barbara were out of home for as brief a period as possible. At Christmas 2019 their house burned down. At Christmas 2020, they were celebrating in their new home — with their family.

We can’t express enough our gratitude to the following organisations for their generous donations:

Fisher & Paykel, Tradelink, Taubmans, Universal Fans, BREC Energy, Studio All, Form Brick, Accent Windows, Fielders, Automatic Heating

View the Cobargo Santa Project

Lily and Henry opened Theodore's (the successor of Host) shortly before the pandemic took hold. ⁠They bought responsibly sourced, local and seasonal food and drinks to the people of Brunswick and they always made us feel welcome.⁠ Like most of Melbourne’s hospitality, COVID hit them really hard.⁠ They didn’t give up, instead they transformed into Ted’s Grocer, providing that same fresh produce for local households. In early 2021, they’ve found a way to bring Theodore’s back to us. Breathe worked with them to create a place for outdoor dining, for people, by activating the street.⁠
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We would like to thank Taubmans who generously donated paint from their new Chromatic Joy collection to add colour to the space. We would like to thank Moreland City Council for working through the street closure with the local community.⁠ We would like to thank BREC for illuminating Saxon Street with magical street lights.⁠
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Lastly, we would like to thank the brilliant local community for supporting Theodore’s through the good times and the hard times, for having your buildings painted to create an immersive place and importantly, for coming together on a hot summers day to paint the street, to claim it back for everybody.