Sustainable Builders Yak

Send us Fan Mail Some certified Passive House homes feel sterile, and some award-winning biophilic homes are uncomfortable to live in. Architect Talina Edwards asks why we can't have both. Talina is director at Envirotecture based out of Ballarat, Victoria and designed one of Australia's early Passive House projects, in Trentham. Talina explains biophilic design as more than timber and pot plants. For her it's a way of designing that calms the nervous system, through daylight, natural materia...

Send us Fan Mail How far behind is Australian construction? In Switzerland, carpenters build every timber house in a digital model before it reaches site. Colin Frei spent twelve years there, went from labourer to carpentry apprentice, and then did six years of further study in timber construction. He's now back in the Adelaide Hills running his own carpentry business. Colin explains how Swiss carpenters with advanced training act as the "General Practitioner" of a timber build. They ta...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you put hemp into a structural brick? Will Stewart, director and co-owner of Natural Brick, joins us to unpack how his team is rethinking one of the most familiar building products around, from what goes into the mix to how it performs once it hits the wall. Natural Brick’s current brick uses hemp grown in NSW, making up around 45–50% of the mix by volume. Rather than being kiln-fired, the bricks are naturally cured using solar heat over an eight-week proces...

Send us Fan Mail Most climate conversations in sport start with the elite game. Tom Campbell starts with the clubrooms: a grassroots footy club whose power bill dropped from $9,000 a year to $900, with the $8,000 difference going straight back into the club. Brian and Simon are joined by Tom Campbell, co-founder of Footy for Climate, which he started while playing at North Melbourne, in the season the Black Summer bushfires filled the training track with smoke. Its Power Forward program puts ...

Send us Fan Mail Australia is the seventh most forested country on earth, yet it imports around $5 billion more timber than it sells, and the gap grows every year. Matt de Jongh, a forester of about 25 years and now with Responsible Wood, the body behind timber certification in Australia and New Zealand, explains how that happened. His blunt version: at home, we have run out of wood. Most of the conversation digs into what "sustainably managed" actually means on the ground. Matt breaks down t...