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My name is Joost Bakker.
And I believe in buildings that create habitat, don't
destroy it, and create a better environment for all of
us to live using materials that are endlessly recyclable,
nontoxic, and natural.
This building shows that you can build houses and buildings
that use other byproducts.
But also, at the end of this building's life-- it may be in
20 years' time or 100 years' time--
this whole building can be pulled apart and reused and
recycled or remade into something else.
I'm really obsessive about using only materials that can
be easily recycled and are nontoxic to work with.
The materials in this house are simple really-- steel,
which is so easy to recycle, and straw.
And then we've got timbers that are made using glues that
are made from soybeans rather than petroleum.
Things, like this timber, is sourced from wharf timber.
Everything else is Viridian double-glazed windows, locally
made Viridian glass.
And then best of all, we've got a green roof out there.
My dream is that councils will enforce all our new buildings
to have roofs like this.
The benefits are just many, but creating habitat for
birds, bees, wildlife; cooling their surrounding temperature
so you don't have a hot surface that's radiating heat
in summer; slowing down stormwater runoff.
It's a massive insulator.
You don't get the heat gain in summer inside, so you don't
need the air conditioning inside.
And you don't get the heat loss in winter.
Yeah, it's a great thing to have, rather than to be able
to sit on the roof and have a drink.
How good is that?
To me, this building is perfection.
This is habitat created not just for the people that live
in it, but for the birds, bees, and animals and insects.
I think for us to be sustainable, we have to live
without generating any waste.
It's got to go down that path.
So this house is sort of built in reverse.
The bathrooms and kitchen were made in Williamstown, in an
old factory.
And we found that this used old
deregistered shipping container.
So we built all the kitchen and all the joinery, bathrooms
in the back, toilets in the back,
laundry in one container.
The beauty about this is that you use a hell of a lot less
plumbing, centralised hot water.
You don't lose much heat.
And you don't use a lot of energy.
So you turn the hot tap on, you will then have a couple of
metres of your hot water service.
A lot of it is not really high-tech.
It's just logical, practical ideas.
It's about using as little amount of energy as possible.
So there's no cooling.
There's no air conditioning in this house.
There is no heating other than a fireplace.
So it's all about positioning of the windows and
cross-ventilation that's key.
I really hope and dream that the houses that will get built
will have green roofs so that in 20 to 30 or 40 years' time,
you will actually fly into Melbourne and you will see
this big green mass of trees and vegetation and
beehives and birds.
And that's where the future is really going to be, I think.