The home of tomorrow

Imagine urban streets lined with farm-fresh produce, homes built from upcycled waste and meatless menus created from protein-packed “weeds”. The future of sustainable living starts now.

City is the new country

Productive buildings will make growers of us all, as homes and apartment blocks that produce their own food and energy transform city streetscapes into urban microfarms. That’s the vision of Australian eco-activist and designer Joost Bakker. He built Melbourne’s Future Food System, the selfsustaining, zero-waste showcase home and restaurant in Fed Square, where two chefs lived, worked and made headlines earlier this year. “I really think that in the next 10 to 15 years city living will transition to a zero-waste economy because people are craving this kind of approach. It’s primal to plant a seed, watch it grow and eat it.” But the eco-future is not about returning to a lo-fi past. “Innovation is key,” says Bakker, who incorporated cutting-edge, energy-efficient and sustainably made Miele appliances into his house design. It’s about giving primitive agrarian techniques modern capabilities. “There’s so much technology coming up that allows us to do this.”

Nose-to-tail architecture

You know about utilise-the-whole-animal eating. Now, anti-waste upcycling is the growing trend in building design. Take Auckland’s new Hotel Britomart, the first in NZ to be certified with 5 Green Stars by the New Zealand Green Building Council. Almost 80 per cent of the building is made from reused construction waste and even the luxuriously soft pillows are crafted from microfibre reclaimed from plastic bottles. “It’s only we humans that generate waste,” says Bakker, who built the Future Food System with compressed straw (a farming byproduct). Miele appliances were selected for their 20-year longevity. Even the showpiece dining table was made from a single cypress tree that had been struck by lightning. “My philosophy is simple,” he says. “We designed waste into our lives; we need to design it out.”

The future of food

In June, New York’s fine-dining icon Eleven Madison Park relaunched with a meatless menu. Seaspiracy, a documentary about the impact of the fishing industry, has been one of the most-watched Netflix shows of the year. Sustainable eating is already becoming mainstream in 2021 and the future will bring it even closer to home. Urban farming is “about celebrating foods that can be grown where you live”, says Bakker, who counts snails, crickets and tuber “weeds” known as tiger nuts among the backyard proteins we’ll be cooking for dinner soon. The Future Food System’s barramundi, yabbies and freshwater mussels also showed how wildly productive urban aquaponics can be. “Every kilo of food that can be grown where you live takes pressure off our existing food system.”

The aqua revolution

Water efficiency is at the heart of emerging eco-technology. “Using this valuable resource for a split second then sending it down the drain isn’t zero waste,” says Bakker. Easy-to-adopt technologies – including hot-water recirculation systems (so you don’t lose a drop waiting for the hot water to kick in) and leak sensors that can alert you via an app to any waste – will help average households have a big impact. Everyday technology that minimises energy and water consumption, such as the Miele kitchen and laundry appliances that Bakker chose for the Future Food System, can make a meaningful difference now. Discover sustainable ideas and the appliance ecosystem at mieleexperience.com.au/joost