As Director of Houses at Breathe, a carbon neutral architecture practice in Melbourne, Madeline Sewall is at the grass roots, having conversations with people about making sustainability easier in their everyday lives.

what do you do?

I’m Director of Houses at Breathe Architecture, looking after the team designing single family homes. A big part of what we do is work with families, teaching them to live more sustainably, with smaller footprints.

USA to Australia?

I grew up in California in a really artistic, outdoorsy family. That instilled in me and my sisters a respect for the environment and sense of stewardship. After I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Florida, I wanted to travel and have an adventure. I ended up in Australia, and did my Masters at Melbourne University.

The Cobargo Santa Project by Breathe – a bushfire help initiative in the township of Cobargo on the NSW south coast. *Photo: Pablo Viega*

A game-changer moment?

My first job in a large practice made me question whether I wanted to be an architect. But I had kept in touch with Jeremy [McLeod, a founding director of Breathe] and he offered me a three-month, part-time position. It was all they had at the time. But I knew it was a really special place and that it was deeply aligned with my values. So I said yes, and I’m still here eight years later.

“There is no progress without failure.”

Your relationship to risk?

I take calculated risks every day. With risk comes reward. When you’re working like we are at Breathe on innovation and impact, and trying to forge new pathways, risk is required. Creating a culture that supports people through their calculated risks and missteps is really important for growth.

Does your studio attract risk-takers because of that?

We definitely attract really tenacious people who care deeply about sustainability. Forging new pathways such as building Melbourne’s first resident-owned embedded energy network that sources 100 precent renewable power, or building one of the first fossil-fuel free cafes is work that the team is proud of.

Edgars Creek House in Coburg (Victoria) by Breathe. *Photo: Tom Ross*

If it's okay to make mistakes, does that soften the blow of failures?

Totally. There is no progress without failure. We try to be really productive about our mistakes and learn from them. And we’re prepared to pivot. Sometimes that happens with new technology that wasn’t available at the start of a process, for example.

“Success is about progress, not perfection.”

How do you measure success?

Success is about progress, definitely not perfection. Some of our projects that have the most impact aren’t perfect. A building is just the background to people's lives, right? It’s not the building that's centre stage, it’s daily life. A Nightingale* apartment is a pretty raw, robust building shell. It's concrete, and its services are exposed. But once people move in with their art and plants and pets and kids, the space takes on all these beautiful layers and the imperfections just fade away.

Hideout House in Brunswick (Victoria) by Breathe. *Photo: Tom Ross*

What do people want most in a house?

Every family is different, but a lot of people we meet are looking for a sanctuary, for the design of a house to make their lives easier. A big part of that today has to do with sustainability, for example, making waste management really easy and providing renewable energy. And having somewhere for bikes that’s really easy to get in and out – not buried under surfboards at the back of the garage.

Have you done many fossil-fuel free individual homes?

All our new builds and a lot of our renovations will switch from gas to all-electric. But if they’ve just put in a new gas system, for example, we wouldn’t want to just take it out and send it to landfill, we would develop a plan with them to go all-electric. So at the end of its functional life, when it’s ready for replacement, we would encourage them to make the switch. We would 100 percent work for free on helping them do. Because it’s really important to us.

Fireside House in Northcote (Victoria). *Photo: Tom Ross*

What are some of the obstacles to change?

One would definitely be the attachment to gas cooking. We need to make (electricity) induction much ‘cooler’ in people’s minds, as it’s 40 percent more efficient. Sometimes we can get people to remove the gas if we give them a wood-fired pizza oven or something cool like that!

“sometimes a bit of naivety is a strength.”

Bardolph Gardens in Glen Iris (Victoria) by Breathe. *Photo: Tom Ross*

You’re most valuable lesson?

Having been out of my comfort zone for much of the past eight years, and through that discomfort I’ve learned that sometimes a bit of naivety is a strength. Especially if you’re brave enough to be vulnerable about it. Going back to basics and asking about why something is done in a certain way, I have been able to get people to re-evaluate why they do certain things. I’ve learned through observation, and watching other architects I admire (Jeremy [McLeod] and Clare Cousins), to not accept the status quo.

How is the Nightingale Housing model changing?

A lot of Nightingale Housing* projects now include a shared kitchen and bathhouse on the roof. Sounds a bit hippie, but actually the idea is that baths are required for young families only for a short time, and they can create access issues for older people or those of different abilities. So the apartments have showers, and we made the bath communal. Other shared services include centralising the hot water plant and water tanks. It’s a tremendous step forward. Nightingale* Skye House is including for the first time an apartment type called a ‘teilhaus apartment’. It’s German for ‘part of house’. They’re small, space-efficient, affordable apartments of around 30 square metres. A common problem in Australian housing is affordability; this is one way to help people get a foot in the door.

Nightingale Skye House by Breathe – one of six architect-designed apartment buildings at Nightingale Village in Brunswick (Victoria). *Visualisation: Meche*

What would you most like to change about the world?

I’d love to reverse climate change…

And I’d like to see government acting more quickly and more effectively on targeting net zero or carbon negativity.

What's next?

We have lots of projects in the pipeline. For a long time our focus was on operational energy and creating fossil fuel-free buildings. We’ve done this intuitively for a long time, but now we’re looking at quantifying that by assessing how much carbon is embodied and how we can offset that, and how we can use it as a tool to inform our designs at the early stages. That includes how we put our buildings together, making sure that they are designed to be disassembled by not using glues, but mechanical fixings that can be pulled apart and separated into different waste streams. So, moving to a more circular production model.

breathe.com.au

*nightingalehousing.org

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