Winning design for 2024 NGV Architecture Commission announced

Melbourne-based architecture and design studio Breathe have won the annual NGV Architecture Commission for 2024. Their design, titled Home Truth, will be on display within the NGV garden from 13 November until April 2025.

The winning design was selected from a shortlist comprising two other teams, including Office of Culture, Technology and Architecture; and Snooks and Harper, N'arwee't Carolyn Briggs and Philip Samartzis. Interrogating the status quo of typical residential construction in Australia, Breathe's winning project speculates on the ethical and ecological impacts of very large homes while envisioning a more environmentally sustainable, small-scale and community-oriented approach.

The project takes the form of a labyrinthine house-within-a-house. An outer house frame represents an oversized silhouette of the average Australian home, whose 236-square-metre footprint ranks as the largest average house size on earth. As visitors pass through the external door, they move through a maze of rooms and corridors before emerging within a reflective, timber volume. Representing a small-scale home, this space is also intended as a meditative space in which to contemplate Australia's alternative housing future.

Reflecting current residential construction methodologies, the outer house frame and walls within are to be built from ubiquitous pine framing, while a skin of silver-flecked Saveboard, made from 100 percent post-consumer waste, is intended to symbolise the inadequate foil insulation used in new Australian homes.

A statement from the NGV noted that "by drawing attention to and contrasting […] these two structures, Home Truth highlights how small footprint housing could help curtail suburban sprawl, lessen the environmental impact of housing construction and create a better quality of life for communities."

Having drawn inspiration Melbourne's Cairo apartments and the Small Homes Service, Breathe aimed to highlight the historical precedent for affordable and architect-designed housing in under 100 square metres. The NGV statement remarked that "that their proposal is not part of some unattainable imagined future, but rather a return to a more thoughtful and appropriate scale of living that responds to the needs of others and the planet."