I'm what the property market would term an 'upsizer'. My partner and I purchased our first home (a modest, two-bedroom house) pre-kids and now, two kids later, we are looking for a larger home.
To fund this larger purchase we put our house on the market and started working on our list of 'must-haves' for the next house.
Must have: Three bedrooms, or maybe four for when regional family come to stay.
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Must have: Two bathrooms, one being an ensuite. We can't keep sharing with the kids forever can we?
Must have: A real laundry! Not a pokey little thing that's part of the kitchen.
Must have: A huge backyard. Room for a cubby, trampoline, swimming pool, pickle ball court. (That last one was a joke, but you get the idea).
Despite being happy in our two-bedder - aside from the lack of storage - once we started the list, it just got longer and longer.
Not to bury the lede, but after selling the house we decided to celebrate our brief time without a mortgage by taking the kids on an extended holiday to Europe.
"In this economy?!" Don't worry, I hear you.
We were able to fund the trip through savings, our lack of major bills in Australia, saved up long-service leave, and me continuing to work part-time while overseas.
While on this trip of a lifetime, and before returning to a life of mortgage repayments, we decided to visit a bucket-list destination: Venice. Luckily for us, instead of witnessing the Bezos wedding, we got to see the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Titled Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., and curated by Carlo Ratti, the theme of the biennale was the climate crisis and how architecture can respond to this global problem.
The exhibition featured over 300 contributions from participants in various disciplines including, architects, engineers, mathematicians, climate scientists, philosophers, artists, chefs, coders, writers, woodcarvers, farmers and fashion designers.
In a statement by the exhibition team, the frightening reality of the climate crisis was highlighted.
"Over the past two years, climate change has accelerated in ways that defy even the best scientific models. 2024 marked a grim milestone, as Earth registered its hottest temperatures on record, pushing global averages beyond the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C target," it read.
"This year's Exhibition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., invites different types of intelligence to work together to rethink the built environment."
An architect and engineer, Professor Ratti said the biennale was unfolding at a "moment of global change".
"The climate crisis is no longer a looming threat-it defines our present. Mitigation is no longer enough. Adaptation must take center stage. Architecture must learn. Must listen. Must adapt."
Exploring the exhibition, the participants revealed initiative and unique ways to approach housing issues around the world, particularly in the wake of climate change.
French architect and designer, Philippe Starck, created an installation with Renault titled 'A House for the Price of a Car'.
The exhibit involved a car on one side, with all of its pieces displayed in front of it, and on the other side, the materials required to build a house. The sign read "Instead of creating caverns out of powdered stone and concrete, we should apply automotive engineering to all components."
With one billion people around the world lacking, Starck said the construction industry should look towards the automotive model.
"The automobile production model seems most appropriate for industrializing housing construction, as it uniquely guarantees a fair fixed cost, rapid and punctual production, and quality that ensures longevity," he said. "A house can and should cost the same as a car."
Another exhibit exploring a unique and sustainable approach to housing was 'Deserta Ecofolie: A Prototype for Minimum Dwelling in the Atacama Desert and Beyond'. Created by architect Pedro Ignacio Alonso, the 16-square-metre structure was designed to sustain a "minimum dwelling and off-grid inhabitation".
The experimental prototype contained eco-technical objects to minimise energy usage including a domestic wind turbine, solar panels, a dry toilet, and a water wall.
While wandering around the exhibition and the installations, and reading the commentary on the housing industry, I began to think about how my housing choices would impact the climate. What could I do that would reduce my carbon footprint?
Incorporating sustainable features into my future home would be the first step, but I also began to rethink the size of our future home.
While we had definitely outgrown our former two-bedder, did we really need the house I had been envisioning? The biennale challenged me to look beyond the idea of "bigger and better" and focus on the features that would be beneficial to our lives.
Instead of my previous checklist, I began to imagine a living room that would fit a couch big enough for family movie nights. Space for a dining table where we could all share a meal and talk about our days. A modest backyard with a small veggie patch and some trees to provide shade and mitigate the summer heat.
What I realised was that we don't need a large, cavernous house that will take us a lifetime to pay off. Instead, what we will be privileged to have is a space for connection, for joy, for pause, and for enjoying the small things.