Building Details - Architects of South Australia

One of Hannaford’s best known public housing developments was Manitoba. ‘Hannaford conceived of the medium-density housing complex in central Adelaide both as a public housing project and as a form of urban planning, and recalls that he approached the SAHT with the concept. In an evaluation of his own body of work as a whole, Hannaford describes Manitoba as an “innovative public housing approach”’ (Marsden [2015]). The Manitoba Housing Complex is significant as the ‘first new public rental housing built in the City of Adelaide by the South Australian Housing Trust reflecting a major change in its tradition of building in outer suburban estates. This was also the first large-scale construction of public, or ‘social’ housing, in the history of central Adelaide, and it marks the start of an important phase in council and government action to revive the city’s residential population, and to retain low-cost accommodation that was traditionally available within the city. Manitoba is also a significant example of an architectural form of medium-density housing new to South Australia, scaled-up and innovatively designed to provide for both communal and private occupation by public rental residents, and to respect existing urban form in an old inner city precinct’ (Marsden [2015]).