Grand Designs Australia host outside the ‘earthship’ house in Tasmania featured in episode one.Credit:
One example of out-of-the-box thinking is in the first episode,which opens with a couple,Matt and Kate,who moved to Tasmania after being locked out of Melbourne’s rising property market. Their beautiful build has been inspired by the eco-friendly and upcycled‘earthship’ style of architecture first developed in the 1970s in New Mexico.
“They’ve taken that model and they’ve tried to upgrade it for a contemporary Australian lifestyle,” says Burke. “Some of the earlier ones,we visited a couple[of houses] while we were filming,they look a bit like hobbit houses. So we’ve upgraded from that;it’s a finished product that looks like a house that you would recognise. And,of course,all the materials are recyclable and sustainable,so in terms of carbon it’s a fantastic idea.”
The concept of home is something 54-year-old Burke has been pondering at a time when Australia is dealing with ongoing issues about howdifficult it is for young people to get into the property market.
Grand Designs Australia host Anthony Burke (left) with Kate and Matt inside their earthship house.Credit:
“I’m thinking about it a lot,” says Burke. “I’ve got two adult kids at home and I’m looking at them,going,I want you to have a good life. But I’m thinking a good life is probably not a single detached home for my kids,it’s some other version of home. The idea of that Australian home dream – this is a generation where that will be evolved into its next version. It simply has to.
“Seventy per cent of people under the age of 35 do not imagine ever buying their own home in Australia. Now that’s a statistic that really freaks me out because it means they don’t have a clear idea of what their options are,they just know what they can’t have. So I think we have to help that generation imagine what they can have and why that might be actually even better than a single detached house.”
The rapid rise in building costs has also affected this season in ways Burke had not seen before. TheGrand Designs Australiateam usually anticipates that two of the 10 houses featured each season will run over in terms of build length but that estimate was blown out of the water.