“Nothing ever slows her down and a mess is not allowed…”

Huh, oh, sorry, caught me singing.  OK, so check this house out, as photographed by my friend Peter Bennetts; (he lives in Melbourne, and we first met on a tiny little rock called Tuvalu while both there working on stories about climate change, he with a writer for Outside, me for Sierra.  He’s also published, with Tony Wheeler of Lonely Planet, the lovely and troubling book Time and Tide, detailing Tuvalu’s loosing battle with climate change.)

Talk about function and form getting mashed up–take a look at that big gorgeous bulb there:   A second skin flows from the eaves, across the ceiling, to the interior walls, gathering bulbously in the heart of the living room as a rainwater-storage tank. “Water-catchment capacities in Victoria have fallen to alarming levels,” Morgan says. “Restrictions have been applied, and much of our state has been burning this past summer. In this context, the water tank is the most significant element of the house, symbolically taking the place of the hearth as centerpiece.” Since the house has no air-conditioning, the steel tank’s main function is to cool the living room passively. It also supplies rainwater for toilets, irrigation, washing wet suits, and occasionally drinking. It’s both a practical and an ambient element of the room: a tap of the knuckles gives a good indication of the water level, while the sound of water dripping into the tank can be heard after a rainfall.”

The house, in other words, has inverted the traditional dynamic of being a hardened shield against nature, and instead works collaboratively with it. Very. Clever.

Plus, Aussie.

Two marks.

Read the rest and see more of Peter’s photos here. 

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