Putting the heart back into homes

What do crippling debt, power blackouts, childhood obesity and depression all have in common? It’s the way we house ourselves. We have been sold a lie — a late capitalist delusion — that big is better. We cram more people into elevators the size of a toilet cubicle than we house in a hefty 4x2 dwelling with a 250sqm footprint.

Big homes, squeezed tightly together with hardscape paving and synthetic grass spell long-term housing and environmental disaster. They’re costly, too. Our current model leaves far too many people behind, struggling to find a place suitable for their needs and budget.

Here in WA, we build some of the biggest houses in the world, especially compared with Europe and Asia. In a time when the floor area per house is rising, so too is people’s sense of loneliness and isolation. Depressive disorders are significantly higher in the city than in regional areas. We’ve traded our health, and our children’s, and important relationships for an in-home theatre and debt. Is it really worth it?

McMansions only meet about 30 per cent of the housing demand. That means the remaining 70 per cent of the population are singles or young couples, students and empty nesters. A shift in the way we think about housing will allow us to latch on to one of the cornerstones of sustainability — that small is beautiful.

Chair of the Sustainability Practitioners Network, Matthew Wallwork, an architect who runs his own practice in sustainable building design, Ecotecture, believes in creating “beautiful buildings that resonate with the environment”, and that redeveloping vacant lots and backyards while retaining their trees and natural assets is the way to go.

“Infill development has a major role to play in stopping our city morphing with Geraldton. It’s the key to turning things around and transforming Perth into a vibrant, liveable city. But we need to do infill differently,” he said.

“We must learn to live with less, using only what we need. To touch the earth lightly.” He’s passionate about creating sustainable communities, the nature of which he says he only rediscovered in his early 50s.

“Living in a country town as a child, I knew a sense of community. City slickers don’t really understand that true community vibe,” he said. “My revelation is that the building is a stage setting. It’s what happens on the stage, between people, that makes it important.”

If we keep developing with a mentality of more, we’ll continue to experience increasing stress and discontent.

“People are getting married to momentous mortgages. We’ve all been brainwashed into putting too much in our homes. It often means less time with the family and more financial stress,” Mr Wallwork said.

The Sustainability Practitioners Network is proposing a fusion of thinking, with ideas from Asia and Europe informing built environment design. The organisation’s Future Homes Expo is on December 4 at Murdoch University, and will showcase leading edge sustainable housing solutions.

You can grab a coffee, pull up a beanbag and learn all about what’s possible from expert speakers and exhibitors, for the future of housing in WA — from energy efficiency, to building design and landscaping, sustainable building materials, co-operative housing models and more.

A house only becomes a home when it nourishes us, and when it provides more than just shelter but a place for meaningful connection within its walls and the neighbourhood.

How we organise individual and infill developments will continue to follow the existing model — leading to a hotter, more barren urban environment devoid of connection — unless we embrace new ways of thinking, building and living. We can, and must, do better.

This article was first published in The West Australian in Renée Gardiner’s weekly column in Agenda, 26 November 2022.