How to grow your next house

In the fable of the Three Little Pigs, houses of straw and sticks were no match for the Big Bad Wolf but it’s time for Australia to embrace the abundance of circular and low-emissions materials at our disposal.

Remembering how to build houses

Construction productivity in Australia has fallen 53 per cent since the mid-1990s but modern methods of building can reverse it, if we choose to scale them properly.

Remembering West Gate

On 15 October 1970, dozens of workers building Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge were caught in its collapse in what is still Australia’s deadliest industrial accident. Thirty-five men were killed and the lives of many more workers and their families were abruptly disrupted. We should honour those who died in the West Gate Bridge failure but also understand why it happened.

The day the slide broke

Our cities’ precious parks are always under threat from neglect, misuse and housing development, but they remain a precious green oasis in the urban sprawl where children of all ages can play and learn together.

Society needs social housing

Low-income renters in Australia are far less likely to experience housing stress, rent arrears, or be forced to relocate, when living in social housing compared to those receiving cash rent assistance payments or no assistance, according to a new global study by Curtin University.

Nostalgia is not a strategy for Melbourne’s urban change

Rapid population growth and rampant house price inflation have left home ownership a distant dream for many Melbournians, but plans to increase housing density are also politically fraught.

Fixing Australia’s housing crisis

Australian society is still coming to terms with the fading promise of homeownership. They are also struggling to agree on the reasons why housing is such a huge problem, and how it can be addressed.

Shifting the Australian housing dream

At the cultural level, our past tradition of home building was largely laissez-faire. The Australian way of leaving it to the developer must change. For this massive renewal, Government must direct, guide and be part of it like no time before.

Building digital trust in the pacific

If Australia wants to be a trusted technology partner in the Pacific, it should help deliver lightweight, resilient systems that others can use with confidence, prioritising tools that operate in low-trust, low-infrastructure environments and designing for flexibility, not control.

Managing project management

Researchers at Macquarie Business School have found surprising reasons why project planners often make poor estimates of project timelines.

Turning litter into streets

Plastic waste such as discarded shopping bags and spent milk bottles could be given a second life by becoming part of critical infrastructure such as roads, as well as playground surfaces.

Building faster – not better

Cutting corners in construction isn’t new, but the risks are magnified when governments set aggressive targets without equally ambitious planning frameworks.