NGV International: Home Truth: A Conversation About Housing Size in Australia

Presented in Partnership with RMIT University

Australia builds big. At 236 square metres, the average Australian house is among the largest in the world. The National Gallery of Victoria's Home Truth program asked why.

The evening paired ideas with atmosphere. Guests moved through Breathe's 2024 NGV Architecture Commission installation before the talk began — a site-specific work in the NGV Garden that questions the ecological cost of ever-larger homes. Then the conversation started.

In photo (from left to right): Bhavna Middha; Jeremy McLeod and Anthony Burke.

Gemma Savio, Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture at NGV, hosted a panel built for friction. Jeremy McLeod, founder of Breathe and Nightingale Housing, brought the architect's view: bigger homes mean more land, more energy, more stuff to fill the space. I, Dr Bhavna Middha, Senior Research Fellow at RMIT's Centre for Urban Research, brought the researcher's lens on housing, sustainability, and belonging. Anthony Burke, Professor of Architecture at UTS and familiar face from Grand Designs Australia, rounded out the panel with a builder's-eye pragmatism.

The throughline: size is never just square metres. It's a proxy for economic drivers, social expectations, and ecological consequence. A bigger house often costs a smaller garden, and fewer chances to share space with the people around you. Yet the trend keeps climbing.

Home Truth didn't offer easy answers. It offered a room full of people willing to ask the question — what does a home actually need to be?