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A few years ago, I watched a TEDx talk by Melbourne architect Jeremy McLeod in which he proposed a new housing model that could make city living more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable. His talk was a catalyst to what has become a ‘hobby interest’ of mine: sustainable architecture.
Like many other places in the world, Australia is facing the double whammy of a housing and a climate crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people are in need of affordable homes, homes that have to be able to cope with the extreme impacts of a changing climate. The building industry, however, is also responsible for as much as 39% of all carbon emissions. Solving these interlinked issues requires architecture governed by humanity and functionality – by need rather than by desire.
Today, about seven years after watching Jeremy’s talk, I’m proud to call him a friend – and a client. Earlier this year, I helped his architecture firm Breathe with a new website (my first go at Webflow) and this week we’re launching a new Guides section that I co-wrote, edited and designed.
The Houses guide offers a compact introduction to the fundamentals of building energy-efficient, comfortable, healthy homes; and with the Materials guide we’re sharing Breathe’s stringent internal framework for choosing the most sustainable building materials possible. There are two more guides to come, still, which will apply similar sustainability principles to apartments and commercial spaces. All guides are made available under the Creative Commons license.
As I said in DD116, Australia is mostly still building glorified tents: inefficient, unhealthy homes that are not only unprepared for a worsening climate but also contribute to it. Putting the building industry on a more sustainable trajectory will require better standards and regulation, but also a broader rethinking of what constitutes a desirable home in times of ecological collapse. (Spoiler: it’s not marble benchtops and eleventeen bathrooms.) I hope resources like these guides can help raise awareness and shift demand towards a more planet-centric, needs-driven architecture.
– Kai
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You receive this email because you subscribed to Dense Discovery, a weekly newsletter at the intersection of technology, design and sustainability. Writing to you from Melbourne is Kai Brach. Do you have a product or service to promote in DD? Sponsor an issue or book a classified.
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Startup News [Classified] SPONSOR
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Top startup & design insights, delivered biweekly
Humbleteam helps startups and enterprises rethink digital products. Over the course of 100+ collaborations in fintech, health tech, proptech and real estate, we’ve seen some things. And now we’re sharing those lessons with Techstars, Seedcamp, and you, in our newsletter. Join today!
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Apps & Sites
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A fresh take on read-it-later apps
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Matter combines a read-it-later tool for saving and cleaning up online articles with features for managing newsletter subscriptions and recommendations by friends to become your one-stop app for media consumption.
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Navigating everyone’s availability when setting a calendar event is notoriously difficult/annoying. Vimcal makes finding a suitable time slot easier through its visual approach to selecting and sharing availability.
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A great way to amplify your individual climate action is to encourage changes at your work place. Work for Climate helps you do that: “You don’t need to be a sustainability expert, as our content and programs can guide anyone through the processes to help their corporation decarbonise.”
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The best kind of digital escapism: explore “the world’s largest live nature cam network” and browse through hundreds of live streams that give you a glimpse of the day-to-day of sloths, bears, bees and crocodiles.
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Worthy Five: Nivi Achanta
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Five recommendations by writer and social entrepreneur Nivi Achanta
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A concept worth understanding:
Deep canvassing, which is essentially active listening applied to activism and political campaigning. In a polarised world where it’s easy to hide behind online identities in spaces that reward constant noise, it’s been important for me to understand how to engage in conversation to truly understand, rather than to debate with no goal of mutual respect.
A book worth reading:
Death’s End by Cixin Liu. This is a bit of a cheat answer since it’s the third book in a fantastic trilogy. Although it’s not the most fun book I’ve read, it’s easily the most mind-blowing. I had to lie down for thirty minutes afterwards to process the intense sequence of (believable) science fiction.
A recipe worth trying:
Paneer tacos. They’re spicy, fusion-y, delicious, and you can put any leftover veggies in them to reduce food waste.
A podcast worth listening to:
Seeing White by Scene on Radio, specifically the How Race Was Made episode. It basically shows how racial injustices are a direct result of economic exploitation, and how the invention of race was essentially commissioned by Portuguese royalty in the 1400s to justify their slave trade.
A piece of advice worth passing on:
Passing this on from my friend Regina: “The best advice isn’t delivered as advice! Advice implies, ‘I’m better than you enough to tell you what to do.’ The reality is, the best advice giver is your honest self. No third party will ever know your situation better than you.”
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Books & Accessories
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Ecology and ethics in design
Papanek’s clarion call to put nature at the heart of design just appeared in a fresh reprint. “First published at the end of the twentieth century, this book offered a plethora of honest advice, clear examples, and withering critiques, laying out the flaws of and opportunities for the design world at that time. A quarter of a century on, Papanek’s lucid prose has lost none of its verve, and the problems he highlights have only become more urgent, giving today’s reader both a fascinating historical perspective on the issues at hand and a blueprint for how they might be solved.”
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A story about perseverance and discovery
A recommendation by a friend who didn’t know what to expect from this book (given the somewhat provocative title) but who was “more than positively surprised”. Lots of great reviews online seem to agree with that experience. “Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a wondrous fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.”
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Overheard on Twitter
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Cows are very calm considering the whole floor is food.
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Food for Thought
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A really fantastic piece that clears up some of the common misconceptions we have of science and science writing – especially relevant in an era of rampant pandemic and climate misinformation. “Science is often caricatured as a purely empirical and objective pursuit. But in reality, a scientist’s interpretation of the world is influenced by the data she collects, which are influenced by the experiments she designs, which are influenced by the questions she thinks to ask, which are influenced by her identity, her values, her predecessors, and her imagination.” I wanted to quote a lot more from this piece – definitely worth your time! (Possible soft paywall)
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Another strong, potentially controversial piece that links some behavioural disorders/the notion of neurodivergence to capitalism, identity and the culture wars. I’d love to hear how people diagnosed with ADHD feel about Moskowitz’ hypothesis – tell me in the comments! “By insisting that everyone falls into a category – neurotypical vs. atypical, ADHD vs. whatever other diagnosis, ‘real’ depression as opposed to intense sadness or grief – we are creating and enforcing structures to understand the world that has been made so incomprehensible to us. We are finding community and meaning through the process of definition. And when someone challenges those definitions, I think it makes people feel like their community (which largely exists online these days), and their very identity, are at risk of falling apart. (Possible soft paywall)
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I’m fascinated by alternative building materials. Here’s a story about a skyscraper made from plywood, showing the world what can be achieved in architecture without tons of carbon intensive concrete. “The architects are keen to emphasise that the same process could be replicated anywhere, many hundreds of miles from a forest. ‘We are currently studying how far we could transport this building without undoing the carbon saving,’ says White Arkitekter’s Robert Schmitz. ‘We think it could probably go twice around the world and still be carbon neutral.’”
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Aesthetically Pleasing
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A fascinating photo series: Arquitectura libre “focuses primarily on the architecture of remittances; the fantastical houses being built by financing from Mexican immigrants in the US who send money home. Arquitectura libre explores the idea of a home more as symbol than as function”.
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George Neue is a geometric sans-serif typeface, ideal for display use to show off its class and elegance.
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Classifieds
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The Week in a GIF
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Reply or tweet at DD with your favourite GIF and it might get featured here in a future issue.
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Did You Know?
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The board game Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism.
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In 1904, Elizabeth Magie invented Monopoly as a criticism of the capitalist system of property ownership. Originally called the ‘Landlord’s Game’, it came with two contrasting sets of rules: “Under the ‘Prosperity’ set of rules, every player gained each time someone acquired a new property (designed to reflect a policy of taxing the value of land), and the game was won (by all!) when the player who had started out with the least money had doubled it. Under the ‘Monopolist’ set of rules, in contrast, players got ahead by acquiring properties and collecting rent from all those who were unfortunate enough to land there – and whoever managed to bankrupt the rest emerged as the sole winner (sound a little familiar?)”
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