ACT Government opens design competition for missing middle homes

The ACT Government has opened a national design competition for pre-approved “missing middle” housing plans, chaired by ACT Government Architect Catherine Townsend, seeking to put a library of pre-qualified townhouse, terrace and dual-occupancy designs in front of Canberra block owners and builders.

Why it matters

This week the ACT Government opened a national design competition seeking pre-approved plans for dual occupancies, tri-occupancies, townhouses and terraces, the housing types the Territory groups under missing middle. ACT Government Architect Catherine Townsend and Planning Minister Chris Steel launched the call for expressions of interest, inviting architects, designers and architecture students to submit entries for a pattern book of homes. Winning entries would be pre-qualified against the Territory Plan, letting a block owner build from an approved template rather than lodging a fresh development application for every project.

The competition follows Major Plan Amendment 04, which already lifted block size and dwelling type restrictions in RZ1 and RZ2 residential zones to allow townhouses, terraces and low rise apartments. Officials are betting that a ready library of compliant designs will move faster than the zoning change alone, since a block owner still has to commission and lodge a design before anything gets built. For a block holder weighing a duplex or terrace conversion, a pre-qualified plan from the pattern book would cut both design cost and approval time once the book is published. RZ1 and RZ2 are the Territory Plan’s standard suburban residential zones, covering the bulk of Canberra’s established blocks, so lifting their dwelling type restrictions under Major Plan Amendment 04 opened a much larger stock of sites to townhouse, terrace and dual-occupancy infill than the zoning change alone would have reached without a ready-made design library behind it.

The numbers

The ACT Government’s own planning work puts the Territory’s five year housing need at roughly 30,000 homes, the estimate behind the broader push to unlock missing middle types beyond standalone houses and high rise towers. The design guide underpinning the competition, the Planning (Missing Middle Housing) Design Guide 2026, took effect under notifiable instrument NI2026-312 from 1 July 2026, giving entrants a fixed rulebook to design against. Expressions of interest close 4 December, ArchitectureAU reported. A cash prize is reserved for the two best Master of Architecture student entries, with no amount published.

What’s next

Entries will be judged by a panel chaired by the ACT Government Architect, with winning designs added to the pattern book for use on eligible blocks across RZ1 and RZ2 zones once it is finalised. The Territory has not released a judging timetable for the competition. Entrants are expected to be architects, designers and architecture students rather than developers, reflecting the government’s intent to build a shared design library rather than hand the pattern book to any single firm. The contest sits alongside the missing middle housing changes the Legislative Assembly passed this month, covered in our report on the missing middle housing bill passing, which removed several of the zoning barriers the pattern book designs are meant to build against.

For now, the practical step for a Canberra block owner or small builder is to watch the 4 December close and the judging date rather than the design guide alone, since the guide sets the rules but the pattern book is what will make a compliant missing middle design available off the shelf.