Pattern Book Small Lot Apartments 02: the NSW small lot apartment design explained

This pattern is for a mid block lot with one street frontage. It cannot be used on a corner lot, and battle axe lots are excluded. The smallest published lot is 13.6 metres wide and 42 metres long, which is 571 square metres, and that lot only carries 3 storeys.

Width decides height, not floor area. The building itself never gets wider: as the lot grows from 13.6 to 16.6 metres the side setbacks grow with it, from 1.5 metres to 2.0, 2.5 and finally 3.0 metres. The fourth storey is only permitted once the lot reaches 16.6 metres and the side setbacks reach 3 metres.

Length decides yield. The official variants are 42, 47 and 52 metre long lots, giving buildings 32, 37 and 42 metres long and site areas of 697, 780 and 863 square metres at the full 16.6 metre width. The nine cards below cover every published width, length and siting condition, including the rear lane and multi lot arrangements.

Type your address to load your actual block from the NSW cadastre, including its boundaries, zoning and planning layers. Dudils screens lot size, orientation and slope to find patterns that could work. It does not complete a planning eligibility assessment. Dudils screens slope from the national elevation model, which is indicative and not a survey, so confirm the fall across your site against the limits on this page, and check council and State mapping to confirm the land is not flood prone or bush fire prone. Even the lowest BAL rating of 12.5 is not compliant. Heritage land, landslip risk land, land affected by a registered easement, coastal hazard land, foreshore land, unsewered land and battle axe blocks do not comply either.

The mid rise patterns only apply in the areas the NSW Government has opened up for more homes: low and mid rise (LMR) housing areas around selected town centres and stations, and transport oriented development (TOD) areas around selected railway and metro stations, where a residential flat building is permitted in the zone. You can look these areas up on the NSW Planning Portal map, or type your address above and the lot finder checks them for you.

The pattern pathway does not apply on land the policy identifies as unsuitable. That includes bush fire prone land, certain high risk flood land, State and local heritage items, and heritage conservation areas.

Where the pattern applies, its development standards prevail over inconsistent local controls, so the lot size, height and setback numbers on this page hold even where a council plan says otherwise. Landscape still has to be resolved on your own site against the NSW Housing Pattern Book landscape design guide, and removing or pruning a significant tree still needs council approval.

The base pattern is a 4 storey building 32 metres long and 10.6 metres wide, set 4 metres back from the street and 6 metres off the rear boundary, with 9 apartments: four 1 bedroom, three 2 bedroom and two 3 bedroom homes. Drop to 3 storeys on a narrower lot and the same building carries 6 apartments.

The ground floor holds the driveway down to the basement, the bin and bulky waste rooms, the plant, a 3 bedroom apartment and the front, central and rear communal brackish spaces, with a communal outdoor area at the rear. A kiosk substation can sit in the front landscaped zone where the network needs one.

Levels 1, 2 and 3 stack apartments either side of the central lift, stair and brackish space. Level 1 pairs a 2 bedroom and a 3 bedroom apartment; Levels 2 and 3 each hold a 2 bedroom and two 1 bedroom apartments. A ventilation notch is cut through the middle of the building so apartments get light and cross ventilation from more than one side.

Parking is basement only. The base pattern basement is drawn with five car spaces including one accessible space, provision for future electric vehicle charging, bicycle parking, a fire pump room, main switchboard, comms room, cold water pump room, and the on site detention and rainwater tanks. The roof carries the plant, condensers, a heat pump behind a screen, an access walkway and an indicative solar array.

These are the internal areas from the apartment type drawings, with ceilings of at least 2.7 metres in habitable rooms. Every apartment has a balcony. The 2 bedroom type used through the base pattern can be built in an adaptable version that meets Australian Standard AS 4299 for adaptable housing, and every apartment meets the ABCB Livable Housing Design Standard.

The floor plans above tag the same apartments at 63.5, 79.0 and 118.0 square metres. Those tags and the internal areas below are different measurements of the same homes, so use the purchased technical drawings for any area or yield calculation rather than either figure on this page.

The base pattern is drawn for an east or west facing street, and the drawings tell you what has to move when the frontage turns. On an east or west frontage the communal brackish space faces north. On a north or south frontage it turns to face east instead. A lot that fronts a northern street is only covered by the multi lot arrangement, where two lots are developed together, so a single north facing block is not a straightforward fit.

The solar diagram tests the base pattern rotated around the compass. Rotated 45 degrees clockwise the basement scheme gets 8 of its 9 apartments to the required 2 hours of winter sun; at 135 degrees clockwise and 45 degrees counter clockwise it gets 7 of 9, and those orientations need the plan mirrored along its length. Every application still has to show that 70 per cent of apartments meet the solar target on the real site.

Slope is tightly limited. The pattern takes a rise of up to 1.66 metres or a fall of up to 1.65 metres from front to back, with the basement ramp gradient unchanged, and the drawings note that on a smaller than base pattern lot the maximum gross floor area may not be achievable. Irregular lot shapes are allowed as long as the minimum setbacks are met.

Fixed features include the position of every entry, the room layouts, bathroom dimensions and clearances, and the brackish spaces. Flexible features include the driveway or studio at the front, the landscaping or substation zone, the joinery and the material palette. Every change, even inside the allowed range, must be declared in the design verification statement.

There are two palettes: face brick with colour matched mortar, or compressed fibre cement sheet. Both work the same way. The ground floor is the base and takes a darker tone of the local Country colour; Levels 1 to 3 are the upper and take a lighter tone of the same colour, with roughly a 50 per cent difference between them. Metalwork stays a single dark red across both.

The colour itself is meant to come from the soil of the place. The material palette guide points designers at the NSW Government eSPADE soil map to find the local colours before choosing brick, mortar and paint. Concrete planter beds, the lift core and the base slab edges are painted an earthy red, the upper slab edges a light earth colour, and the brackish space soffits are white fibre cement.

Dudils screens lot size and orientation to identify patterns that could work. It does not complete a planning eligibility assessment. Before buying a site, placing an option on it or purchasing the pattern licence, check the current State and local council mapping and obtain professional advice.

The pattern does not comply on bush fire prone land, even at the lowest BAL rating of 12.5, or on excluded flood prone land. Heritage items and conservation areas, landslip risk land, registered easements that affect the proposed building area, coastal hazard land, foreshore land, unsewered land and battle axe blocks also need to be ruled out. Corner lots are excluded outright.

Get the survey contours before anything else. The pattern only takes a rise of 1.66 metres or a fall of 1.65 metres from front to back over a lot 42 to 52 metres long, which is a flat site, and Dudils screens slope from the national elevation model, which is indicative and not a survey. Two of the siting sheet's arrangements are annotated with a larger level range than the slope adaptation sheet allows, so confirm the limit that applies to your orientation against the purchased technical drawings.

Watch the width and height trap. A lot between 13.6 and 16.5 metres wide only carries 3 storeys, so a block that looks big enough for the base pattern may not be. A north facing street frontage is only covered by the multi lot arrangement, which needs an adjoining lot. Basement parking is the only parking option, so confirm the ground water, rock and driveway crossing conditions early.

Overshadowing is the other one to test early. Neighbouring homes must keep at least 3 hours of sun to half their private open space on 21 June, evidenced with shadow diagrams. A block north of existing houses can easily overshadow neighbours to the south, which can limit how many storeys you can build. Ask Good Architect to undertake a site feasibility study before buying land, taking an option or buying the licence so the constraints and the likely yield can be tested together.

These are the key numeric controls for the pattern, taken from the development standards table in the official pattern document. They sit in the Housing SEPP and prevail over inconsistent local controls where the pattern applies. Note that the standards table sets the 4 storey minimum lot size at 863 square metres while the base pattern sheet states 697 square metres for the same 16.6 by 42 metre lot, so confirm the figure that applies before relying on it.

Using the pattern starts with the NSW Government pattern licence, listed in the design data as licence from $15,000 per lot. On 6 August 2026 the official shop showed a subsidised price of $1,500 against $15,000, described as subsidised for the first six months, and marked the product sold out. Price and availability change, so check the shop before you plan around either number.

The fee buys the technical drawings in PDF and DWG formats, technical guidance, the pattern adaptations, the landscape guide, an editable design verification statement and a unique identification number for your application. Files are delivered electronically and the download window is limited, so line up your design team before you buy.

You then engage an architect or building designer to adapt the drawings to your site. The design verification statement must be completed by an architect registered under the Architects Act 2003 and listed on the NSW Register of Architects, confirming that every fixed and adaptable feature of the pattern is carried into your application.

The application is lodged as a development application under Chapter 7 of the Housing SEPP. Reduced assessment removes the slow parts of a normal apartment DA because the design questions are already answered: no reassessment against the Apartment Design Guide or the Schedule 9 design principles, and fewer requests for further information. You still have to demonstrate BASIX and NatHERS compliance, meet the ABCB Livable Housing Design Standard, and pay for survey, geotechnical, traffic, waste, landscape and services advice.

The pattern drawings are indicative designs for planning approval, not construction drawings. After consent you still need full construction documentation, engineers and a practitioner registered under the Design and Building Practitioners Act for this Class 2 building. Before committing to the land, the licence or the application, start with Good Architect's site feasibility study to test whether this pattern can be responsibly adapted to the site.