Architect and licenced builder John Powrie is a Higher Degree by Research (HDR) student at the University of the Sunshine Coast who's on a mission to prove that luxury living can be sustainable - and it doesn't have to cost the earth.
Former Sydneysider and architect John Powrie moved to the Sunshine Coast armed with long service leave and a wild dream of building an ecolodge with his own hands out of the earth dug from his own property.
He says he “fell in love with the area” partly because it reminded him of the lush Mossman Gorge and Daintree Rainforest regions of Far North Queensland. His search for suitable land ended on viewing 50 acres of pristine rainforest near Maleny which he says felt instantly like “stunning mental therapy.”
The U-shaped land is thick with forestation, loud with the sound of birdsong, and has three ridges. It’s untamed, vertical land, too steep for cattle or sheep, and too steep for farming, but perfect for John and his dream. “For me, it was perfect, because every hill is a view,” John says.
John purchased the property with a vision to build a “totally off grid” ecoretreat, one that looks “nothing like suburbia.” Each building on the property would be an earth house, built on a foundation of rocks from the free, fabulous dirt excavated right out of his own land and moulded into a shape that minimises the need for artificial air conditioning, and maximises the guests' "awe experience."
In his first year on the Sunshine Coast, John started work on his ecoresort, making the dirt roads to the property more accessible. Unfortunately, he chose an extraordinarily wet year to begin tackling the project. “It rained solidly for weeks and weeks and weeks,” John recalls.
“It was wet and soggy so I couldn't get machines on the property, plus it was hard to get people to work there as all the grader drivers and heavy equipment guys had a job with main roads working on M1 upgrades.”
With rain hampering progress, John began wondering what he could do to stay busy. “This is where it gets silly,” he says. “I thought…I'll do a Higher Degree by Research (HDR) on ecolodges on the weekends, you know, as a little thing to educate myself about building it. Well – shocker – it's now my full-time job, I'm at uni five days a week, and I go out to the property on weekends.”
John enrolled in a postgraduate research degree at UniSC’s School of Business and Creative Industries. His theses is titled “Elements of ecolodges that elicit awe and the impact of the ecolodge awe experience on pro-environmental intent.”
In other words, what is it about an ecolodge that causes awe – that WOW feeling – and can this emotional response cause the person who experiences it to care more about the natural world and therefore change their actions to be pro-environmental?
“Often when you go to an ecoresort, you go there because of the location – it's got a beautiful vista or there are tigers in the jungle – but a lot of these places are just ordinary cabins. They might be nice or luxurious, but they're something you'd find in Sydney or anywhere.
“I want to build something unusual, so the eco experience starts when guests are coming up the driveway…they walk into the place going, 'Whoa.' It's like when you go to a major international hotel, 99 percent of them have these big open foyers…you walk in, you go, ‘Wow!’ there's this awe that occurs.
“When you have an 'awe' experience, it often changes your thinking. Like swimming with whales, a lot of people come out of the water and go donate to whale charities, they join whale watching groups, they become actively pro-whale conservation."
“So, the question I’m asking is, if people have an awe experience in the wilderness or around the ecolodge vicinity, does it change their thinking to become more pro-environmental?”
With this project, John also wants to demonstrate that earth houses and luxury can go hand in hand. “I'm trying to show that you can have a luxury experience in a totally off grid place,” he says.
“I have friends living in very good suburbs in Sydney, and they say to me, ‘No air conditioning? I won't go there.’ But it's about the design, incorporating breezeways. If you go to the Middle East to places like Dubai in the little townships where the Emiratis live, almost all the houses have this square tower in the middle of the building which is designed to create a draught.” These ‘wind towers’ catch and direct cooler breezes into the room below through vertical shafts, while simultaneously drawing the hot air up and out of the building.
“It can be 40 degrees outside, but if you've got a breeze on you, it brings it down to 30. It really works. There are little things like that you can design, which doesn't have to be a square tower – it can be a roof that looks like an elf's hat which makes the air funnel up – and you don't have to do anything, there's no mechanical parts.”
John says another benefit of earth housing is it’s the “best fire-retardant material on the market." "Plus, it's free, it's building materials that are sourced right off your own property.”
John’s ecolodge design will be disability friendly and use nearly all “natural things” with as little plastic as possible, except for electric wiring and plastic conduits, which are dictated by law. But even for the unavoidable plastic materials John is required to use, he says he plans to be innovative and invent covers made from stone or timber or other natural materials when possible.
John admits he’s never “lived on the land” in his life and while it’s a steep learning curve, it's an “awesome” one. “I'm now a whiz with the tractor,” he laughs. “Up here is such a calm, friendly place, and I've come from Manly – which is lovely – but the pace of life is agro and people have a ‘get out of the bloody road’ sort of attitude.”
While John says he loves the process of problem solving in designing buildings, originally he had a different career path picked out for him.
As the eldest son of a GP, John says his dad pushed him hard to be a doctor. “I love my dad, but he was very authoritarian and if he said, 'I think you should do this,' then that was it, it was a steel curtain. But I knew in my heart I didn’t want to do that.
"I'm a problem solver type person, and I'm not focused. I haven't been diagnosed, but I have a feeling I'm ADHD, I can't sit still.
“Dad said, ‘Ok, so do science and then you can transfer to medicine. But I really wanted to do architecture."
John studied science and - as soon as he got the chance - switched to architecture at the University of New South Wales. He then worked in the building and architecture industry for close to 15 years before becoming a teacher at a private boys’ school where he taught technical drawing for ten years, then tertiary teaching in property management for another decade. When he got long service leave, John says he jumped at the chance to come to Queensland and fulfil his ecolodge dream.
As for undertaking his research project, John says it's probably the most challenging thing he’s ever done. "As an HDR student, it can feel isolating because we’re all doing our own projects, but the best thing I did was join the Postgrad Students Association at UniSC because we support each other.”
“I decided to research ecolodges because I was building it myself, and I thought ‘I can actually educate myself while doing it.’ And to be honest, the research I've done has already helped me in the design.”
Ultimately, John hopes the papers he publishes will be of benefit to the wider ecotourism industry.
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