2024 NGV Architecture Commission

The 2024 NGV Architecture Commission offers a compelling vision for alternative homebuilding in Australia. Home Truth, designed by architecture and design studio Breathe, is an installation that prompts reflection on how small-scale architecture can foster more sustainable, higher-quality and community-oriented living environments.

The project invites audiences into a space that questions the ethical and ecological impact of very large homes commonly built around Australia. Ranking among the largest in the world, the average Australian home is 236 square metres in size, ahead of the United States, the UK, France and Canada, as reported in 2020 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Home Truth comprises an external house frame that represents the oversized silhouette of the average Australian home. Nestled inside it is a quiet, reflective timber volume that depicts the footprint of a smaller-scale house.

As visitors pass through the garage door of the larger house, they move through a voluminous maze of rooms and corridors before emerging into a smaller space constructed entirely of timber studs packed tightly together to create a haven. The meditative wooden retreat presents a physical and intellectual point of reflection for visitors; a glimpse into an alternative housing future.

While future-focused, the small scale home in this project is inspired by Melbourne’s twentieth-century housing solutions, including the terrace houses of the 1900s, which offered density and community: Carlton’s Cairo apartment complex, which provided small-scale apartments on the city’s doorstep for working single men; and the mid-century Small Homes Services, which delivered affordable, architect-designed houses in under 100 square metres. By drawing attention to the historical precedent for smaller-scale housing, the architects highlight how their proposal is not part of some unattainable imagined future, but rather a return to a more thoughtful and appropriate scale of living that responds to the needs of others and the planet.

Architect: Breathe
Builder: Foxa Company
Project Manager: Assembly Interiors
Structural Engineers: Phil Gardiner and Riley Faulkner
Sound Composer: Fuligin Sound
Timber Supplier: Drouin West Timber & Truss
Substrate Supplier: McCormacks Australia
Rock Supplier: RokWorx

Breathe is a Melbourne-based architecture and design studio recognised for its commitment to sustainable, enduring and purposeful architecture through a relentless questioning of the status quo.

This is encapsulated in its housing projects, including The Commons, which set a new benchmark for sustainable living: featuring a car-free development, rooftop gardens, rainwater harvesting and energy-efficient systems. In 2014, The Commons won the Victorian Architecture Medal and the National Architecture Medal in both Multiple Housing and Sustainability. The project also went on to win a further ten State and National awards, becoming a beacon for change in the Multiple Housing sector.

Through advocacy and activism, Breathe identifies broader opportunities for architects to transform the built environment, championing better housing policies and environmental standards. They are the driving force behind the Nightingale Housing model, a not-for-profit organisation that seeks to revolutionise the housing market by prioritising affordability, sustainability and community. They have also developed a range of guides that offer accessible introductions to sustainable building design – free to read, share and copy from their website.

Project Team:
Jeremy McLeod
Irma Del Valle Nachon
Jonas Nutter
Marcella Palma
Tom Supple

Now in its ninth iteration, the NGV Architecture Commission is an annual initiative by the National Gallery of Victoria that invites Australian architects and designers to create a temporary, site-specific work in the Gallery’s Grollo Equiset Garden.

Seeking to exhibit leading architectural ideas in the context of the NGV, the commission was instigated in 2015 with John Wardle Architects’ I Dips Me Lid. The playful steel, timber and textile structure formed a theatrical centrepiece offering shade, retreat and a place for performance and workshops. Since this debut, the commission has enlivened the garden by creating a place of congregation. From a pink pool inspired by Australia’s inland salt lakes to a thought-provoking meditation on the architectural legacy of Traditional Custodians, the innovative design of each commission tests the boundaries of what is considered architecture to engage the public in a dialogue about contemporary architectural practice.

The NGV Architecture Commission has previously been designed by Nic Brunsdon (2023), Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang (2022), Taylor Knights + James Carey (2021), Yhonnie Scarce and Edition Office (2019), MUIR + OPENWORK (2018), Retallack Thompson and Other Architects (2017), M@ STUDIO Architects (2016) and John Wardle Architects (2015).

The ambition of the annual NGV Architecture Commission designed by Australia’s leading and most innovative architects and multidisciplinary teams has been recognised by industry peers:

• M@ Studio’s hyperreal suburban carwash Haven’t you always wanted…? won the Melbourne Prize at the 2017 AIA Victorian Architecture Awards.
• Retallack Thompson and Other Architects’ Garden Wall, a maze-like series of open-air passageways, corridors and rooms was awarded a commendation in the 2018 AIA Victorian Architecture Awards Small Project Architecture category.
• Muir + Openwork’s Doubleground, a collage of dramatic structural landscapes derived from the iconic NGV International building, was awarded the 2019 AIA National Award for Small Project Architecture.
• In 2020, Yhonnie Scarce and Edition Office’s In Absence won both the AIA National Award for Small Project Architecture and the global award for Small Building of the year at the Dezeen Awards.
• Pond[er] by Taylor Knights & James Carey won the 2022 AIA Victorian Architecture Awards Small Project Architecture Award.
• (This is) Air by Nic Brunsdon, a large spherical structure that breathes, won a commendation at the 2024 AIA Victorian Architecture Awards Small Project Architecture category.