{"id":204146,"date":"2025-10-10T23:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T23:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/204146\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T23:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T23:57:09","slug":"anthony-burke-explores-evolving-home-ownership-amid-rising-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/204146\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Burke explores evolving home ownership amid rising costs"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the 12th season of Grand Designs Australia, architecture professor Anthony Burke<\/a> is seeing a shift. In the age of rapidly rising house prices and a cost-of-living crisis, the definition of what is a \u201cgrand design\u201d is being reimagined.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re leaning into the issues of the day a lot more,\u201d says Burke. \u201cThe way I put it is, we\u2019re still called Grand Designs Australia but it\u2019s really about grand ideas and ambitions. People are bringing innovation into the idea of home in Australia with a fresh energy but they\u2019re not necessarily huge houses. That\u2019s what\u2019s exciting because there\u2019s so much grassroots innovation happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Grand<\/p>\n

Grand Designs Australia host outside the \u2018earthship\u2019 house in Tasmania featured in episode one. Credit: <\/p>\n

One example of out-of-the-box thinking is in the first episode, which opens with a couple, Matt and Kate, who moved to Tasmania after being locked out of Melbourne\u2019s rising property market. Their beautiful build has been inspired by the eco-friendly and upcycled \u2018earthship\u2019 style of architecture<\/a> first developed in the 1970s in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve taken that model and they\u2019ve tried to upgrade it for a contemporary Australian lifestyle,\u201d says Burke. \u201cSome of the earlier ones, we visited a couple [of houses] while we were filming, they look a bit like hobbit houses. So we\u2019ve upgraded from that; it\u2019s a finished product that looks like a house that you would recognise. And, of course, all the materials are recyclable and sustainable, so in terms of carbon it\u2019s a fantastic idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

The concept of home is something 54-year-old Burke has been pondering at a time when Australia is dealing with ongoing issues about how difficult it is for young people<\/a> to get into the property market.<\/p>\n

\"Grand<\/p>\n

Grand Designs Australia host Anthony Burke (left) with Kate and Matt inside their earthship house. Credit: <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thinking about it a lot,\u201d says Burke. \u201cI\u2019ve got two adult kids at home and I\u2019m looking at them, going, I want you to have a good life. But I\u2019m thinking a good life is probably not a single detached home for my kids, it\u2019s some other version of home. The idea of that Australian home dream \u2013 this is a generation where that will be evolved into its next version. It simply has to.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeventy per cent of people under the age of 35 do not imagine ever buying their own home in Australia. Now that\u2019s a statistic that really freaks me out because it means they don\u2019t have a clear idea of what their options are, they just know what they can\u2019t have. So I think we have to help that generation imagine what they can have and why that might be actually even better than a single detached house.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rapid rise in building costs has also affected this season in ways Burke had not seen before. The Grand Designs Australia team usually anticipates that two of the 10 houses featured each season will run over in terms of build length but that estimate was blown out of the water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the 12th season of Grand Designs Australia, architecture professor Anthony Burke is seeing a shift. In the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-204146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}