The trend for building large houses in Canberra is unsustainable and can't continue

Australia and America now officially have the largest houses in the world on average, and Canberra has the biggest houses in Australia.

Meanwhile, family sizes are shrinking, even while houses are getting larger and larger.

Not to mention their carbon footprints; bigger doesn't always mean better or more efficient, and in fact many of these larger houses are poorly designed and cost far more in the long term to run than smaller or better designed homes.

Speaking to The Canberra Times last week, architect Shannon Battisson, who has recently been announced as the new national president of the Australian Institute of Architects, bemoaned the lack of forethought when people turned their minds to designing a new home.

This in itself is a problem; far too many otherwise adequate homes are being demolished for no good reason, making way for much larger homes that don't reflect the needs of the buyer.

Or rather, they reflect the imagined needs of the buyer, as many of us are buying with a view to onselling later.

A house must therefore have as many bells and whistles it can possibly cram into its over-large footprint, whether or not these suit the actual needs of the family who will be living there.

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Apart from the obvious and inescapable link between large homes and climate change, Battisson suggests we are thinking of houses less as homes and more as commodities, and this is a mistake.

"I think what we need to focus on more is that a home's raison d'etre is shelter," she says.

"A home is supposed to provide you and your family somewhere safe, somewhere happy, somewhere healthy. And to do that, it needs to have fresh air, it needs to have sunlight, and it needs to have access to the outdoors - these are really, really basic principles."

When did we become so unsentimental about our homes? It speaks to the current modern predilection for disposable goods and fast fashion, our constant need for the new.

And yet house prices are through the roof, along with our apparent growing tolerance for massive debt. It's hard to fathom where or how the gap between our needs and wants will grow so huge as to be insurmountable.

But, says Battisson, if people are going to spend large amounts of money tearing down perfectly good houses and building new ones, they may as well do it properly.

Homes must always come down to a matter of personal taste, to be sure.

Some families require larger spaces, or can justify having a butler's pantry, multiple-car garage or little-to-no garden space.

But these choices should be made with due consideration to environmental impact and efficient design.

Canberra is a city founded on good and considered design, and guiding principles around energy efficiency and floor-space to greenspace ratio are well-established.

Canberra is filled with educated people who purport to care about such things, so why do our houses not reflect the city's own philosophy?

It's a state that can't last too much longer. Canberra, of all places, can't be the one lagging behind when it comes to solar passive buildings and healthy living spaces.

But with the over-sized houses now popping up all over town, it's not looking good.

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