In Australia, prospective apartment buyers are often advised to steer clear of modern builds, with many people (expert or not) claiming that older brick buildings from the 1960s-1990s are the way to go. After all, if it’s been standing for that long, then the construction must be sound, unlike modern buildings, which are often perceived as being cheaply made and turned around for a quick profit.

There is undeniably some truth to this, and by extension, if these older brick buildings have been around for so long, this would make them sustainable just for that fact alone, right? The answer to that question is mixed and compounded by several problems that largely didn’t exist until relatively recently.

The 21st century problem

The most obvious problem is the huge increase in Australia’s population from 1960 to 2025. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the population in 1960 was approximately 10.4 million. By 1990, that number had increased to 18.1 million and today it is around 27.5 million.

Over 75 years, our population has grown by more than 164%. The increase in construction has not followed suit.

It’s a circular argument, with many builders and developers claiming that building regulations make it harder to stay in business and provide the number of dwellings we need to address population growth. While at the same time, a lack of regulations creates unsustainable and sometimes unsafe structures, as builders and developers are not held accountable for what they are producing.

This awkward place is where we sit right now, and the tension is palpable. Claims about apartments being more sustainable are all good and well, but if the Australian public can’t trust these structures to remain standing beyond their 10-year warranty period, then it’s all a moot point.

The combination of significant population growth, stagnant wages and unchecked growth in property prices has led to this transition period we find ourselves in — the death of the “Australian dream” of owning a freestanding, single-storey house on a quarter-acre block in the suburbs. Gone is the Hills Hoist, the swimming pool in the backyard, 2.5 kids and a big family dog.

The dream is different now, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less honorable. Perhaps that dream looks more like a 2-bedroom apartment in a well-cared for block in a convenient location with good access to amenities and public transport. And maybe the Hills Hoist has been replaced with a fold-out clothesline on the balcony, which looks out onto a shared swimming pool. The 2.5 kids may look more like one or two, and the big family dog in the backyard may have been replaced with an apartment-friendly small dog, or even a cat.

Change is always difficult to accept, but it is inevitable. We have no other choice but to make the most of what we have and find innovative new ways to solve our problems.

The sustainability myth

So, are modern apartments more sustainable, or is that just something we’re telling ourselves to cope with the disappointment of our dying Australian dream?

The short answer is yes — apartments significantly outperform detached homes from an operational perspective.

First and foremost, research by Roberts, Bruce, MacGill, Copper and Haghdadi (2019) shows that apartment households have far lower median daily electricity loads than detached homes. Specifically, approximately 8.8kWh/day for apartments compared to 17.7kWh/day for detached/semi-detached houses. Even when accounting for smaller household sizes, apartments still win out on energy efficiency.

And beyond materials and building techniques, there are also inherent sustainability benefits of higher density living. For example, denser living reduces per-person infrastructure and transport energy (shorter trips, more walking/public transport) and allows shared services (lift cores, common hot water systems, centralised plant) that can be more efficient.

It’s not all straightforward of course, as there are many ways to judge what is “sustainable”. One grey area is embodied carbon. Recent Life Cycle Assessments quoted by Infrastructure Australia (2024) have shown that embodied carbon (materials and construction) now represents a significant portion of building emissions in Australia. Where the grey area comes in is that apartments with concrete/steel frames can have high embodied carbon per square metre. But when you amortise embodied carbon per resident or per functional unit (e.g., per person-year of housing), higher density tends to reduce per-capita embodied emissions.

This is confirmed in a preliminary study by Illankoon, Vithanage and Pilanawithana (2023), which estimated the embodied carbon footprint of homes at around 193–233 kg of CO2 per square metre. Comparatively, concrete high-rise apartments often show higher embodied carbon per square metre, but not necessarily per occupant/dwelling when factoring in higher occupancy or smaller per-person floor area.

Overall, it’s safe to say that based on several different sustainability indicators, apartments tend to be more sustainable than detached houses.

As for the debate between older brick apartments and more modern structures, the discussion is more nuanced. In some ways, the current state of apartment living (and ownership in particular) is completely unsustainable. Research by the NSW Strata Community Association (2023) shows that more than half of strata/apartment schemes registered between 2016 and 2022 had at least one serious common-property defect, with the average rectification cost being $283,000 per affected building.

From a financial standpoint, this is certainly not sustainable, and homeowners deserve better.

Environmentally speaking, the advent of modern building techniques and the introduction of compulsory sustainability targets has done wonders for the sustainability of our apartment dwellings. Comparatively, brick apartment buildings from the 1960s-1990s often lack insulation, have poor airtightness, and use inefficient glazing and services. For them to meet the same sustainability standards as today’s structures, they require retrofitting. Theoretically this is fine but getting owners corporations to agree to collectively spend their own money on building upgrades (outside of necessary remediation work) can be like herding cats, especially if the building’s sinking fund has been improperly managed.

So, is it all doom and gloom for apartments (and their owners)? Certainly not.

The apartments doing it right

ParkLife by Austin Maynard Architects

ParkLife represents the gold standard for sustainable apartment design. Completed in 2022, ParkLife is a 37-home apartment building within the world-renowned Nightingale Village in Brunswick, Melbourne. This building has an impressive 9.1-star NatHERS energy rating, is 100% fossil fuel-free and carbon neutral.

Credit: Tom Ross.

Another remarkable feat is the building’s ability to achieve thermal comfort without any mechanical heating or cooling through a highly insulated "esky" cladding system and an Energy Recovery Ventilation (ERV) system. Essentially, the building is sheathed in highly insulated white steel Askin panel cladding with an insulated fire-proof core, avoiding high-carbon pre-cast concrete, and drastically reducing heat transfer. The ERV system in each apartment also continually provides fresh air through heat exchangers, minimising temperature loss while managing moisture build-up.

Encouraging residents to use active transport, ParkLife has no private car parking, instead providing 95 bicycle parking spaces. It also includes dedicated recycling facilities, an e-waste shelf, and a worm farm, avoiding waste chutes.

Importantly, the building addresses social sustainability by dedicating 20% of its homes to social housing, integrating a vibrant rooftop amphitheater and productive gardens for community use, not to mention having a direct connection to the adjacent public park.

The Timberyards by TURNER

Currently under construction, The Timberyards is a sustainable design project set to transform a 2.2-hectare industrial site in Marrickville, NSW, into a vibrant mixed-use neighbourhood with 1,073 build-to-rent and co-living units alongside 115 affordable housing units. The design aims to seamlessly integrate housing, workplaces, retail, and significant public spaces, creating a highly connected community near key transit stations.

Its core sustainability and social principles include First Nations-led design that honors the Gadigal & Wangal Country and prioritises ecological regeneration. The project will retain and integrate the existing industrial fabric of the site, while introducing extensive deep soil networks and new tree canopy to significantly improve the site's ecological value.

Managed under single ownership, The Timberyards also aims to directly address Sydney's housing affordability crisis by providing affordable rental accommodation for approximately 1,700 people.

Nightingale Bowden by Breathe Architecture

Completed in 2022, Nightingale Bowden is a 36-home apartment building in Bowden, South Australia, that managed to achieve a 5 Star Green Star rating and an 8.2-star NatHERS rating. Entirely fossil fuel-free, the building is connected to a 100% GreenPower embedded electricity network. It also houses a solar array on the roof, making it certified carbon neutral in its operation.

Nightingale Bowden has been designed based on the principle of reductionism, eliminating expensive, non-essential elements (like second bathrooms and individual laundries) to save on costs and carbon, while investing those savings into quality, low-embodied energy materials (such as recycled bricks and concrete with reduced CO2 emissions) and high-performance double glazing.

Credit: Anthony Basheer.

To address the housing crisis, the building allocates 50% of its apartments as social housing and community rental homes, with the remainder sold to owner-occupiers “at cost” as affordable housing. Social connection is also fostered through shared communal facilities, including a rooftop space with vegetable patches, a guest house, and a design that encourages interaction while still paying homage to the suburb's industrial past.

These may be extreme examples (in the best way possible), but the fact that such thoughtful designs exist shows that it is possible for apartments to be sustainable, and to provide a lifestyle that is just as good — if not better — than a traditional freestanding home. There will always be a market for houses, but with the way our population is trending, and our tendency to settle close to the coast, apartment living is the way forward. And it’s crucial that we get it right.

Main image: Nightingale Bowden by Breathe Architecture / Credit: Anthony Basheer / Supplied.

References

Illankoon, C., Vithanage, S. C. and Pilanawithana, N. M. (2023) 'Embodied Carbon in Australian Residential Houses: A Preliminary Study'. Buildings, 13(10), p. 2559. doi: 10.3390/buildings13102559.
Infrastructure Australia. (2024). Embodied Carbon Projections for Australian Infrastructure and Buildings. Sydney: Infrastructure Australia.
Office of the Building Commissioner (OBC) & Strata Community Association NSW (SCA NSW). (2023). 2023 Strata Defects Survey Report. Sydney: NSW Government.
Roberts, M.B., Bruce, A., MacGill, I., Copper, J. and Haghdadi, N. (2019) Photovoltaics on Apartment Buildings Project Report. Report prepared for Energy Consumers Australia (ECA). Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM), UNSW Sydney.

Stephanie Stefanovic

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