Reincarnated McMansion

Auditing, Dismantling, Rebuilding

Cheap Energy, Suburban Sprawl and Big Houses...

Australia’s new and existing housing landscape demonstrates a remarkable cultural homogeneity; it is dominated by brick veneer, terracotta tiled roofed houses, which often have concrete slab foundations.

This building model, is found in arid central Australia, cold highlands area, the tropical north and along the densely populated coastal suburbs, isn’t sensitive or adaptive to its immediate environmental conditions – it is essentially climate rejecting. It is a model which at its worst, relies on active, energy consuming, green house gas producing air conditioners and heaters to maintain acceptable levels of comfort for its occupants. The McMansion is the ‘Up Sized’ version of this model ( a project home exceeding 400sqm).

In our discussions with developers, urban planners, architects and home owners, the ques-tion of what to do with Australia’s vast car dependant suburbs, built during a short period of cheap energy and cheap raw materials (second half of the 20 century), has been asked time and again. The 150 - 170. 000 new houses built each year*, now employing a growing number of sustainable design principles, do not address the remaining sprawl of oversized, poorly built, mechanically cooled and heated housing stock that makes up the remaining urban landscape.

* http://www.hai.com.au

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Reincarnated McMansion Auditing, Dismantling, Rebuilding

In the last few years, soaring oil and commodity prices, the worst drought on record, the Garnaut Climate Change Review and positioning of a carbon tax economy to cen-tre stage of the political agenda, all signal new economic, environmental and social paradigms within which housing development will be conceived, evaluated and built.

In 2008, a single recycled brick is valued at 10% less than a new brick, whereas its reuse represents a 86% reduction of green house emissions.* In 5 or 10 years time, the new brick will not only be manufactured and transported using energy that is poten-tially 4 times as expensive (crude oil recently predicted by the CIRSO to reach $8 / litre by 2020)**, but it is also highly likely that fuel will also be taxed under a carbon tax scheme. The recycled brick on the other hand, will earn its user carbon credits, increas-ing its value.

The Reincarnated McMansion project seeks to act as a catalyst for a new, greener and more sustainable approach to suburban redevelopment that goes beyond the existing unsustainable practice of:

a) knocking down existing housingb) down cycling some materials and sending the majority to landfillc) rebuilding with all new materials.

In a ‘carbon tax’ economy, the Reincarnated McMansion model will let develop-ers do what they do best: build homes, add value to land, exploit existing resourc-es i.e. the vast materials stockpiles (poorly designed homes) ready for use onsite in the suburbs, claim and trade carbon credits and reduce costs (in infrastructure) through increased urban densification.

* http://www.ecobricks.com.au/default.htm ** http://www.csiro.au/resources/FuelForThoughtReport.html

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