Shea CullenNSW Registered Architect 9748 · Updated 27 September 2026Two homes side by side, each with a courtyard dropped into the middle of the plan, and a 10 day complying development path if your block clears every gate.
Semis 02 is one of the low rise designs in the NSW Housing Pattern Book. Sibling Architecture drew it for the NSW Government as a dual occupancy: two dwellings side by side, each with its own front door, car space and rear garden. The Government Architect has already reviewed it, so a proposal that keeps to the drawings can be approved as complying development instead of through a development application. That only applies on a block that meets every one of its conditions, set out below.
What the design is doing
A semi is a long narrow plan, and the usual result is a dark middle. Sibling's answer is a courtyard 3 metres deep between the kitchen and the living room of each home, so both rooms get a second wall of glass and air crosses the plan rather than stalls in it. A skylight does the same for the stair. The building is two storeys at the street and single storey at the rear, which protects sun and outlook for the neighbours behind.
Will it fit your block
There are two base versions. Inside a low and mid rise housing area the lot must be at least 12 metres wide and 450 square metres. Everywhere else in NSW it must be at least 15 metres wide and 650 square metres, and it must also meet your council's minimum lot size for a dual occupancy. Width is measured at the front building line, not the widest point, which matters on a block that splays out behind the frontage. The base pattern is drawn on a lot 37.5 metres deep. A wider version, the base pattern plus, needs 13.5 metres and 510 square metres in a low and mid rise housing area, and adds the hallway width and covered car space that lift the homes to the gold level of the livable housing standard.
Mid block, corner and rear lane lots all work. A corner needs a secondary street setback of at least 2 metres, parking at the rear and driveways at least 6 metres from the intersection. On a rear lane lot in a low and mid rise housing area the parking comes off the lane, which drops the front setback from 6.9 metres to 4.5 metres. A battle axe lot has no frontage, so the pattern cannot go on one. Then read the survey: the design absorbs a fall of up to 1.4 metres in each direction through internal level changes, and a steeper block rules it out.
Twelve siting sheets come with the pattern, six for low and mid rise housing areas and six for the rest of NSW. These six cover the range.
Drawings by Sibling Architecture for the NSW Housing Pattern Book. © State of New South Wales (Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure).
What you get
Two homes, suitable for Torrens title subdivision, so they can be sold separately. Each runs off one hall: a front room you choose, then stair and laundry, kitchen, courtyard, and dining and living opening to the garden. In a low and mid rise housing area the upper floor gives two bedrooms per home with a bathroom and a separate WC. Elsewhere the extra width gives three bedrooms with an ensuite and a family bathroom, and a wider kitchen, dining and lounge below. Either version gains a bedroom if the front room is built as a ground floor bedroom rather than as a garage. Both versions are drawn in full, from the site plan to the roof.
Drawings by Sibling Architecture for the NSW Housing Pattern Book. © State of New South Wales (Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure).
On floor area the sources disagree. The official design page publishes 120 square metres per home, while the pattern documents' base floor space ratios, 0.56:1 in a low and mid rise housing area and 0.47:1 elsewhere, work out closer to 126 and 153 square metres. Treat both as indicative and confirm your chosen options against the licensed drawings.
Parking is at least one off street space per home, and no more than one of the two homes may have an enclosed garage. What you can change is a fixed list, chosen separately for each home: the front room, the upstairs bedroom and bathroom layouts, the kitchen shape, a skylight and one of four material palettes. The stepped street facade, the window hoods, the roof form and the courtyard are fixed, and every option has to be declared in the design verification statement.
On a 13.5 metre lot in a low and mid rise housing area, this is what the extra width buys.
Drawings by Sibling Architecture for the NSW Housing Pattern Book. © State of New South Wales (Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure).
There are four colours, green, terracotta, creamy and grey, and each published palette pairs two of them, one per home, so the pair reads as two houses rather than one long building. Every palette keeps the same construction: a brick base, painted sheets above, a prefinished metal roof and anodised window frames.
Drawings by Sibling Architecture for the NSW Housing Pattern Book. © State of New South Wales (Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure).
Approval and cost
The licence comes first. On 8 August 2026 the official NSW pattern book shop listed Semis 02 at $1,000, marked as subsidised for the first six months. The subsidy has an end date, so check before you rely on the figure. One licence covers one lot and one building, and a second building or a second lot pays the fee again. The pack holds the drawings in PDF and 2D DWG, a BASIX information sheet, the design verification statement template and the landscape guide, with separate drawing sets for low and mid rise housing areas and for the rest of NSW, the adaptation sheets, and a pattern registration number for the application.
Someone then has to adapt those drawings to your block and prepare the application, and the design verification statement must be completed by an architect on the NSW Register of Architects, or by an accredited designer, who states their registration in it. The application goes to a council or a private certifier as a complying development certificate under the Pattern Book Development Code in Part 3BA of the Codes SEPP. The pattern document states an accelerated 10 day timeframe for pattern book certificates, against 20 days for standard residential complying development.
The drawings are an indicative design for the planning application, not construction documents. You still need construction documentation, engineering, BASIX and NatHERS, a survey, a landscape plan, stormwater design and a driveway crossing approval. These homes are Class 1a, so the Design and Building Practitioners scheme does not apply as it does to apartments.
What rules a site out
Complying development is not available on constrained land. Bush fire prone land is out, including at the lowest rating of BAL 12.5, as is excluded flood prone land. Heritage items and heritage conservation areas, landslip risk land, coastal hazard land, foreshore land and unsewered land all have to be ruled out, as does a registered easement crossing the building area. If any of those apply you can still propose the design, but through a standard development application rather than the fast tracked route.
Two more checks apply. Outside a low and mid rise housing area the front setback may have to match the average of the two nearest houses, which pushes the building further back than the drawings assume. And every pattern book development has to show that neighbours keep reasonable solar access, so a site north of existing homes needs shadow diagrams early.
An address screen tells you whether the lot size and shape could work. It is not a planning assessment, and it replaces neither current mapping nor the title and survey. Our guides on checking whether a site is too steep, bushfire risk and dual occupancy on the Central Coast cover those checks in more detail.
Where we fit
Our NSW Pattern Book Feasibility study is a fixed $5,500 and it tests your block against all seventeen designs, not just this one. The desktop work covers zoning and whether the low and mid rise housing policy reaches the block, lot width, depth and area against each design's minimums, the frontage rules and the hazard layers. We then read the survey contours against each pattern's own slope limit, and finish with a site plan showing setbacks and buildable area plus rough floor plans for the design that suits the block best. It does not include the development application, which we quote separately once we know the site. Shea Cullen is NSW Registered Architect 9748. Semis 02 is a Class 1a building, so an architect or an accredited designer can sign its design verification statement, and we sign our own.
Check the design against your own block
The quickest way to find out whether your lot is in range is to type the address in and let the screening run across the whole book rather than this one design.
Screen your address against every pattern book design on Dudils
The full plan set for this design, with the official site plans and a floor plan for every level, is on the Dudils page for Pattern Book Semis 02.