“The front façade of the house must not be identical or very similar to any house within four lots on either side of the street.” 

This is the first in a series of articles on design codes and design standards for residential estates.

Most residential estate design codes (“design guidelines”) include a design standard like the one above.  The intent is to avoid houses that look the same from being seen together and devaluing the street.  Variety, it seems, is the spice of life.For us at the Design Review Group, this type of standard raises a host of questions: What does identical mean? How similar is unacceptable? What about mirror images?Why four lots each side, or five, or three? If the house is on a street corner, does it need to be different to those houses in the side street? Is the proposed house just compared with houses already completed or under construction, or with all those approved to date?If a row of eight attached townhouses across the park all look the same, why can’t two detached houses?

The issue of similar facades is most important in first home-buyer estates, where the houses are close to each other and mostly built by volume builders.  It becomes increasingly less important as the lots get bigger and more houses are custom designed.  Similar house facades become less of an issue over time, as front gardens grow and make each lot more distinctive.Why are similar facades an issue at all?  We think it is practical for people to be able to easily tell houses apart.  That’s why our ultimate test for this standard is this: If you are looking for your house on a dark, rainy night, can you easily tell your house from the neighbours?  We think you should be able to do so by glancing at the houses from the middle of the street, not by walking up to peer at the number on the letter box!While making each house distinctive is good, having a total hodge-podge of forms, materials and colours along the street is not. It’s good to have some consistency along the street, just not repetition.  Having houses across the street from each other that look similar can add value to the public realm.Lot owners sometimes complain about a house being constructed next door or across the street being too similar to theirs.  They may fear that an identical house nearby will devalue their own big investment.  We know of no evidence that shows that.Assessing this type of standard takes us more work than any other.  The most extreme version of the standard we have come across is five lots in each direction, on both sides of the street.  That means we have to search our files and compare the proposed façade with up to twenty other facades.  The fee for doing that is much heftier, and we don't think it's good value. What is good value?  For most estates, we think the way to go is to ban an identical or very similar front façade from being built on the lot to the left, and the lot to the right.  Don't worry about the other side of the street.  Adopting that as the standard avoids the worst case for the least cost - two identical houses can’t be built right next to each other, and only two facades need to be compared with the proposed facade.

Now for our answers to the questions we posed earlier.  We don’t claim they are eternally correct answers, just pragmatic practices we apply to processing applications.Identical means the same builder with the same model of façade.  Even with different colours, it’s still an identical façade.If it has the same form, and similar colours, it’s too similar.  If the colours are very different, it might be acceptable.Mirror images are fine, if the house is not symmetrical.Estates we handle vary from not having this type of standard to requiring different facades within five lots. If your house is the same as the one next door on the street corner, and its façade faces the other street, your façade is fine.We compare an application with the previous relevant approved applications, not just with those houses that have been built.If each house in a row of houses is identical, then it’s poor design.  Better to do something different on the ends of the row, and perhaps in the middle too.  Better to have more variety in the two detached houses as well.