It’s a shocking figure. The average home in Australia is 236 square metres, which is bigger than the average house in the United States, the UK, France and Canada, according to the 2020 Australian Bureau of Statistics.

A new free exhibition at NGV International, Home Truth – Breathe Architecture’s winning design for the 2024 NGV Architecture Commission – asks us to reflect on the “Australian dream” of owning a big house by presenting a stark, undressed house for visitors to explore in an open-air installation.

“We build the biggest housing in the world in a time of climate crisis, in the time of a housing crisis with a cost-of-living crisis. And we think we want to have a conversation with the country about that,” says Jeremy McLeod, director of Breathe. The Melbourne-based architecture and design studio is known for its sustainable and purposeful architecture.

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The studio, which is behind models such as the Nightingale Housing Project, entered the NGV’s annual architecture commission with some reservations.

“The Breathe team came to me and said, ‘Do you want to enter the NGV Architecture Commission?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely not’,” McLeod told Broadsheet. “We’re a mission-driven practice, so it’s got to be about people or the planet, and how do you do that at the NGV?”

How they’re doing it is by inviting visitors to enter a pine-timber-clad home in NGV’s Sculpture Garden to see the scale and material used to create a 236-square-metre home – then, as a surprise, to see a smaller home concealed inside it.

The installation has been constructed from pine timber and upcycled food packaging that looks unfinished. Pegged to the lawn in front is a For Sale sign that reads “More space than you’ll ever need”.

You enter through a garage door, stepping into a strange labyrinth of corridors, dead-ends and exits. There’s a soundtrack of construction noises, auctioneer voices and leaf blowers creating an intense environment.

After a series of wrong turns, you will feel a change. A tall piece of basalt, etched with rings, stands in the centre of the room as a comment on designing on Country. “Both the material and the music changes as Breathe draws us into a more natural and more contemplative space,” says NGV curator Ewan McEoin. “This is a space of reflection.”

The installation is held together by screws, meaning it can be packed away at the end of the exhibition and reused.

“What we’re asking people to consider is: What are the individual and collective implications of us all having so much space?,” adds McEoin. “Could we all actually want less, and is that better for us and for the planet?”

NGV Architecture Commission 2024: Home Truth by Breathe is on now at NGV International until April 2025. Entry is free.