If you’re building, plan for long-life, adaptable housing

NOT long after completing his architecture degree in 2007, Mathieu Gallois went on holiday to Lorne, on the Great Ocean Road. He stayed in a “big block box”, owned by a friend.

“I was struck how this home was contrary to everything we’d been taught about how to build a good sustainable house,” Mr Gallois recalls. “I was thinking, ‘What do you do with homes like this?’”

His answer is Reincarnated McMansion, a mix of architecture and art project, designed to challenge the way we think about our energy-sapping dwellings.

“Our proposal is to get a large unsustainable house, take it apart, and reuse the great majority of the materials to build two or three best-practice, zero-emission homes on the same site,” he explains.

The project also deconstructs the notion of a housing shortage in Australian cities. “Our new homes are three times as big as new homes in the UK,” he says. “There’s plenty of room for everybody. It’s just that we’re electing to live in bigger and bigger homes with fewer people in them.”

Now based in Sydney, Mr Gallois and his team hope to secure funding in the coming months. As well as making a point, the scheme should turn a profit: once constructed and displayed, the reincarnations will be sold.

While the designs will depend on the site, one key strategy will be to crush the old dwelling’s brick veneer and convert it into a type of rammed-earth interior wall, for thermal mass.

“All those materials we associate with suburbia – concrete, terracotta tiles and red bricks – will be visible in the Reincarnated McMansions,” he says.

The project will embrace a concept of green design championed by one of its members, architect Tone Wheeler, from Environa Studio. He’s coined the “three L’s” of sustainable building: long-life, loose-fit and low-impact.

In a conventional building, Mr Wheeler says, too little thought goes into the varied lifespans of component parts. Instead, we should consider buildings in two sections: the main frame, and the services and fittings.

“The long-life section is the structure of the building, the thing you can imagine lasting between one and two hundred years,” he says. The embodied energy of the structure doesn’t matter, so long as it is built to last.

The rest – the plumbing, wiring, sanitary-ware, heating and cooling, and interior – should be installed in a way that’s easy to adapt.

“You use a spanner, not a hammer,” Mr Wheeler says. “It’s not nailed and glued in place, but bolted so you can undo and remove it.”

Typically, bathrooms and kitchens are replaced every twenty years, and the renovations produce a lot of waste. “The wiring and plumbing is buried in the wall so you’ve got to rip off the plaster. You have to re-build the building.”

The third “L”, low-impact, relates to the fit-out. “We need to concentrate on using green materials for things like the carpet, paint and furniture. Think about the longevity, maintenance and renewal of those parts, and choose as good quality as you can find,” he says.

Mr Wheeler’s firm now designs houses so they can be split into two or three apartments in the future. “We need to recognise that buildings are continually updated, and design them in a way that can adapt to change,” he says.

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The time is ripe for backyard produce exchanges

IF you happen upon McCleery Reserve, in Coburg, on the third Saturday morning of the month, you’ll see a small group gathered next to a big brolly. They’re the gardeners of the Inner North Urban Harvest, there to swap home-grown fruit and vegies.

On the trestle tables and in baskets, you’ll see the season’s produce sorted. And likely as not, you’ll see the swappers in repose. “It’s a very good excuse to sit down and have a cup of tea and a chat, really,” says Alicia Hooper, one of the swap’s founders. “We catch up on what’s going on in people’s gardens and share tips, tricks and recipes.”

The Coburg group is just one of dozens of food swaps around the city and beyond. There are long-standing monthly exchanges at CERES in East Brunswick, and Smith Reserve in Fitzroy, and others in Bulleen, Forest Hill, Newport and Footscray, to name just a few.

Swaps are easy to set up, blessedly free of bureaucracy and as popular as summer’s first strawberries.

Ms Hooper says all-comers are welcome at their events, bearing any shade of green-thumb or any variety of fresh produce. “In the summer months, people often bring bags of plums, apricots and other stone fruit. It always makes a return next time as some sort of preserve,” she says.

As well as encouraging healthy eating, the urban harvest is about learning. “I’ve never before had such a good understanding of seasonal produce and the sorts of blights that occur,” Ms Hooper says. “It’s given me an appreciation of the land, resources and transport it takes to feed ourselves.”

Skill sharing is also top of the list for Drysdale Harvest Basket, on the Bellarine Peninsula. The swap has been running for just 18 months, says co-founder Jill Pring, but members have been spoilt for workshops, talks and backyard tours.

“Over time people have lost knowledge about how to provide food for themselves and their family, so we’re trying to reintroduce those skills. The older generation in the group love being able to pass them along,” she says.

Swaps are held on the first Saturday of each month at Drysdale’s neighbourhood centre. The group has about 90 members ($10 a year, per household). Like the Coburg urban harvest, it is very informal; members give and take as they please. “People take less than what they bring,” Ms Pring says. “It doesn’t matter how many times you encourage them to take more.”

Any leftover fruit and vegies are given to the public by way of donation to the local food bank.

Ms Hooper and Ms Pring encourage householders to start their own swap if there isn’t already one in their neighbourhood. Permits usually aren’t necessary, because the veggies are swapped among neighbours, not bought and sold.

But if you want to start an exchange and you’re concerned about regulations, contact the Municipal Association of Victoria, or your local council. Friends of the Earth in Adelaide have also put together a helpful step-by-step guide.

When she began in Drysdale, Ms Pring was motivated by the idea of reducing food miles and promoting eating fresh, local, seasonal produce. “But surprisingly, the most valuable thing that has been building up a strong community feeling,” she says. “The more communities that do it, the better.”

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Harvesting stormwater is essential in a sustainable city

CONSTRUCTION has just begun on a stormwater capture system in Darling Street, East Melbourne. The project, funded by the City of Melbourne, signals a big shift in the public pipelines.

The scheme will divert stormwater from existing drains in adjoining streets and recycle enough water each year to fill nearly 20 Olympic swimming pools. The water will be captured in an underground tank, treated, stored and used to keep nearby parks and trees lush.

The technology has been developed by Biofilta Stormwater Solutions and engineering firm Cardno. It uses natural filters comprised of triple-washed sand and carefully selected indigenous plant species.

Biofilta director Brendan Condon says: “The microbes that live on the roots of the plants break down nutrients and utilise them. Heavy metals get bound up in the top layer of sand. The system can recirculate the water for multiple passes so the bugs get more grabs at the pollution.”

The East Melbourne project is the first in a series of in-road stormwater projects that form part of the council’s climate adaptation strategy. It is estimated to cost $750,000 and should be completed by mid-year.

“We’ve got an enormous volume of polluted stormwater sheeting off the urban environment, creating problems in rivers, creeks and waterways,” Mr Condon says. “And it’s a phenomenal untapped resource that will help protect cities against future climate challenges.”

Professor Tony Wong, director of the Centre for Water Sensitive Cities at Monash University, agrees that we must shift our mindset about stormwater.

“Stormwater is often seen as a nuisance we should get rid of very quickly,” he says.

He argues that our standard approach not only misses a chance to improve our water security, but also causes erosion and degradation of our waterways and Port Phillip Bay. The scale of the problem grows as the city expands and housing density rises.

“Creeks are now getting more water than they would normally get in any storm event. The traditional infrastructure is less able to cope, so we see water on the road more frequently now than in the past,” Professor Wong says.

In a natural environment, only about 15 per cent of rainwater flows into waterways, filtered through the soil. The rest evaporates or is transpired by plants.

Hard surfaces flip the ratio. “When we knock the trees down and pave the land, we find that the creeks now get 85 per cent of the rainfall,” he says. “The numbers vary from city to city, but with any urbanisation, natural creeks receive about four to eight times the water that used to flow into them. Our urban creeks are suffering from too much water.”

A number of other local governments – including Port Phillip and Kingston by the bay – have begun to install raingardens to treat and minimise stormwater runoff.

Professor Wong believes that within two decades, up to a third of Melbourne’s water consumption could come from stormwater.

“Having gone through the last drought, a lot of councils are now looking at stormwater to help with the public space maintenance,” he says.

“It’s not just about water as a commodity. It’s about water providing the means for liveability and for the greening of the city. With water we can bring some biodiversity back and influence the microclimate to protect against the effects of heatwaves.”

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