In 1960, modernist architect and critic Robin Boyd published a florid critique of Australian architecture, aesthetics and culture, The Australian Ugliness.
Featurism, or the arbitrary and incoherent application of architectural elements, outraged Boyd’s functionalist sensibilities. In his critique, the national character was indicted for its superficial values. Arguably, aspects of Boyd’s critique endure, but given the ample ecological footprint established in Chapter 1, an updated critique along the lines of ‘the Australian profligacy’ is perhaps in order. Despite the recent shift to higher densities, most Australian housing occupies vast, car-dependent suburban tracts, is wastefully over-sized, thoughtlessly sited relative to sun direction, light and airflow, weakly regulated, and therefore constructed to minimal ecological performance standards (Birkeland, 2008; Burke, 1999; Forster, 2004). Cheap, subsidised energy has been the panacea for regulating extremes of climate and transporting householders ever further to work, shops and services, partly explaining why Australian houses are among the largest in the world (Dowling & Power, 2012).
This assessment does not do justice to the flourishing, although still marginal, sustainable housing movement with its genesis in the genuinely experimental and alternative housing appearing in Australia and elsewhere from the 1970s onward. Again, there is a strong parallel between this emergence and the counter-culture revolving around food that took root in the same era across continents. The contemporary literature of sustainable housing – scholarly, technical and popular – is suggestive of two distinct orthodoxies: the dominant technocratic and mainstream ‘greening’ approaches, and in contrast,
integrative, social-ecological approaches. I discuss these below, including examples of the latter approach.
The dominant, technocratic approach is characterised by an atomistic emphasis on individual dwellings, tools such as energy rating schemes, and the
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and urban form. I develop this notion of ‘green counterparts’ in relation to
kitchen design in Chapter 5, arguing that they maintain the unsustainable status quo. Expanding Birkeland’s (2008) critique of technocratic approaches to
sustainable building, architectural scholar Simon Guy (2010) mapped diverse understandings of sustainable building. Urging socially grounded approaches, Guy balanced his argument with recognition of the benefits that performance- oriented sustainability approaches have brought about. This is reinforced by the Green Building Council of Australia’s (GBCA, 2013) recent, independently assured report that presents improved performance data for 428 ‘Green Star’ rated building projects from the past decade, compared with standard practice.
Demonstrating the second approach to sustainable housing – the integrative and social-ecological – and belying its title, is the Australian Your Home Technical Manual (DCCEE, 2010). Targeting housing designers and householders, it addresses climate zones, urban setting, streetscape,
biodiversity, stormwater, noise, home adaptability and health, transport, safety and bushfire risk as integral to house design. This approach weighs toward Yeang’s (2011) four strands of ‘ecoinfrastructure’, and the interlinking of scales and systems in Mostafavi’s (2010) ecological urbanism, both of which were introduced among the post-sustainability perspectives in Chapter 1.
Collectively, these social-ecological works are most aligned with, and offer robust guidance to, this study.
Popular accounts of both retrofit and new-build housing approaches also offer guidance as to how integrated, ecological design principles might be realised. Michael Mobbs’ Sustainable House, first published in 1998, is a prominent Australian example. Mobbs shared his family’s painstaking decision processes as they retrofitted a compact, inner Sydney terrace house with solar energy, water and waste recycling systems, and other ecological design features. Importantly, he also discussed in detail the family’s contingent household practices and their role in optimising the new systems, as well as challenges they experienced. Mobbs has since opened the house to the public, reporting in excess of 19,000 visitors (Throsby, 2012), and as I elaborate in Chapter 7, providing a compelling learning and engagement model.
The quest of architects Brenda and Robert Vale to build a new family home, off the grid and with on-site services, is one shared with growing numbers electing to build for self-sufficiency in Australia. Documenting their British example in
The New Autonomous House (2000), the Vales gave lengthy consideration to siting for sun access, and advocate a range of alternative technologies. Those living in conventional housing would likely experience some dissonance with the level of user engagement demanded by this design and what was deemed as ‘sufficient’. Their reasoning however, is difficult to fault:
In the autonomous house, resource depletion begins at home: it is possible for the occupants to misuse their resources without
damaging anyone but themselves. … This relationship between user and resources, and the effect this has on the Earth as a whole, constitute an important step in putting people in control of their circumstances. People may learn to value a resource if they appreciate the effect of scarcity (2000, p. 39).
The direct relationship expressed here between the home, its use and
resources demonstrates the interplay between spatial-material house form and householder practices. This interplay is rarely foregrounded as a sustainable housing design concern; normalised householder practices are more or less given (for example, Harrison, 2013; London & Anderson, 2008). However, two Australian studies help to shed light on the dynamic, and the recurrent issue of tenure. Studying the sustainability decisions of Australian householders, Kelly Fielding and co-authors (2010) found owners were more likely to take water and energy efficiency actions, as well as curtailment (conservation) actions than tenants.
In their study of sustainable, affordable housing, Ilan Wiesel and co-authors (2012) questioned whether tenants’ practices result partly from the failure of building designers to include basic, low cost passive design features, such as eaves for sun shading, daylight access, and natural ventilation. A social- ecological perspective on housing design therefore offers potential to mediate the plurality of housing trends, types and tenures I have discussed throughout
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this section. In the chapter’s penultimate section to follow, I profile three design precedents which exemplify such social-ecological imperatives.
2.4 Guiding lights: Three ecological design precedents
As introduced in Section 2.0, design precedents – or built artefacts – represent influential ‘texts’ in design discourse and design education due to theknowledge and ideological positions encoded within them. For this study, I signalled the role of precedents as departure points for further design
exploration, rather than archetypes. This section is dedicated to profiling three precedents that exemplify transferable social-ecological design knowledge, particularly in relation to the integration of food, housing and social space. I also connect the precedents, as outcomes of design practice, to key themes
discussed to date in the thesis in reflection of my aim to transfer this study’s outcomes to practice. In ‘reading’ these buildings as texts, I therefore highlight strategies for enhancing regenerative and adaptive capacity, the emergent building types, participatory design processes and ‘design as pedagogy’ (Orr, 2002).
The first precedent, located in Montreal, Canada and built in 2009, comprises a purpose-built, multi-dwelling example of productive housing, in which private and communal spatial and material norms are somewhat challenged.
The second, located in Berkeley, California, is a detached Victorian house, adapted into the ‘Integral Urban House’ in the 1970s in parallel with the budding environmental movement. The adaptation treated the entire site as a maximally regenerative system, within which the house and householders catalysed essential, cyclic processes.
The third precedent is located in northern, regional Sweden and takes the form of a multi-use commercial and community centre, built by a local co-operative using participatory approaches between 1998 and 2000. I have included this multi-use example for the potential of its nascent type to complement current developments in urban agriculture, and help compensate for the poor liveability of much new higher density urban housing. While the first and third precedents
are located in climates more extreme than any Australian climate zone, I identify principles and considerations from each that are transferable to the Australian context.
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Box 2.1: Precedent 1 – Maison Productive House, Montreal, Canada