THE SHELTER JOURNAL | NO. 009 What happened to the Australian backyard? For generations, one of the great symbols of Australian life was not inside the house. It was behind it. The backyard was where clothes dried, vegetables grew, children disappeared for hours and a tree eventually became large enough to shade the house. It held the shed, the dog, the cricket pitch, the compost heap and whatever project was too noisy, dirty or unfinished to bring indoors. It was not empty l

THE SHELTER JOURNAL | NO. 007 Architecture promised to elevate humanity. Too often, it forgot to house it. Visit the Gold Coast and the evidence is difficult to miss. Enormous houses occupy almost every metre of their blocks: multiple living rooms, monumental entrances, imported finishes and roofs complicated enough to shelter a small village. They are expensive, conspicuous and technically elaborate. But are they architecture? Money can purchase floor area, decoration and st

We may have spent a century standardising the wrong thing? THE SHELTER JOURNAL | NO. 008 There is an uncomfortable contradiction in architecture. We celebrate individuality. We talk about place, culture, climate, landscape and the people who will inhabit a building. And then we construct almost every house using essentially the same slow process. One site. One builder. One trade after another. One piece at a time. In the rain. In the heat. With scaffolding, waste bins, delive

Perhaps the greenest building material is the one you never use. THE SHELTER JOURNAL | NO. 006 There was a time when the word sustainable asked a difficult question. Can we continue doing this? Can we continue extracting resources at this rate? Can we continue consuming this much energy? Can we continue throwing materials away? Can we continue building as though the resources beneath our feet are unlimited? They were uncomfortable questions. Then something happened. Sustainab

...and why we stopped building that way. THE SHELTER JOURNAL | NO. 005 For thousands of years, humanity used one of the most efficient structural ideas ever discovered. Then we largely stopped. Not because the arch stopped working. Because it became too expensive to build. BEFORE ROME The arch belongs to no single civilisation. Its story reaches deep into human history. Early forms of arches and vaults appeared in ancient Mesopotamia. Ancient Egyptian builders also underst

THE SHELTER JOURNAL | NO. 004 Geometry comes before material. For nearly four billion years, Nature has quietly taught one engineering lesson. When strength matters, shape matters. WALK OUTSIDE “Learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else.” Leonardo da Vinci Walk outside. Look carefully. The trees. The leaves. The shells beneath your feet. The eggs in your kitchen. The bones inside your body. The waves breaking onto a beach. The hills on the hori

THE SHELTER JOURNAL | No. 003. Why Does Nature Build Better Than We Do? Man uses mass. Nature uses geometry. For most of human history, we have believed that stronger means heavier. Need a stronger bridge? Use more steel. Need a stronger wall? Pour more concrete. Need a stronger roof? Make every member thicker. Our instinct has always been remarkably consistent. When something appears weak, we add more material. More mass. It seems obvious. After all, if a small stone is w

THE SHELTER JOURNAL | NO. 002 Why housing is still unaffordable. For more than half a century, prefabricated and modular housing has promised to change the way we build homes. For decades, governments, industry and researchers have searched for a better way to build homes. The challenge has become increasingly urgent. Housing affordability continues to decline. Construction productivity remains stubbornly low. Labour shortages continue. Governments continue searching for wa

THE SHELTER JOURNAL | NO. 001 Why Housing Became Unaffordable. Residential construction has not innovated at the pace of the problem it is now being asked to solve. People often blame rising house prices on expensive land, expensive materials, high interest rates or a shortage of skilled trades. Each of these contributes to the problem. But they are not the problem. They are symptoms of a much deeper issue. After working in architecture and construction for almost four deca