“The most destructive things we humans do,” says Joost Bakker, “is eat.”
In terms of sentences that grab your attention, the introduction to new Australian documentary Greenhouse by Joost is right up there. Then again, Bakker – a multi-disciplinary designer, no-waste advocate and the film’s eponymous protagonist – has long been something of a provocateur.
As a florist, he’s turned heads by combining plant life with found electrical clamps and steel frames to create surprisingly butch flower arrangements. He’s used hay bales to build restaurants with rooftop gardens in the middle of Australian capital cities (plus inspired spin-offs further afield). He’s collected bones from Melbourne fine-diners, boiled them up and served them at a soup kitchen.
In 2020, the Dutch-born, Australian-raised designer’s two decades of high-concept sustainability projects came to a head when he hit go on the construction of Future Food System. Erected in one of the busiest areas of Melbourne, the off-grid, three-storey house and urban farm produced all of its own power and food. Even the cooking gas was generated from human and food waste (Google “biodigester toilet”). Ambitious? Certainly, but that’s how he likes it.
“We can have it all,” Bakker tells Guardian Australia. “We can have houses covered with biology, plants, ecosystems and waterfalls. It’s not necessary for us to be destroying the planet or killing each other with materials that are making us sick. The infrastructure is already there. It’s just about reimagining our suburbs and reimagining our buildings.”
Shadowing Bakker throughout the project from set-up to pack-down, was film-maker Nick Batzias (The Australian Dream, 2040) who squeezes plenty of action into the pacy 90-minute documentary. While Covid and construction provide moments of drama, the bulk of the film focuses on the building’s green-thinking initiatives. Steam from the showers is used to grow mushrooms; the foundation-less building is anchored by self-watering garden beds filled with 35 tonnes of soil. Cameras take viewers inside the Bendigo factory that produces Durra Panel: a biodegradable, fireproof wall and ceiling panel made of straw.
Although Greenhouse by Joost is released nationally next week, Bakker and team meticulously documented and shared the project in real time on social media. Jeremy McCloud, co-founder of Melbourne-based architecture firm Breathe, says clients have already approached him with requests to include rooftop gardens in building plans, as well as to build with Durra Panel. (While clients reference Future Food System in regards to the latter, it’s worth noting that other influential buildings around Australia have also used Durra Panel.) Although Breathe is a practice committed to sustainable thinking, McCloud says Bakker’s projects are on another level.
“He does stuff that we as architects just can’t do … We could never have those aspirational conversations with developers or governments that he does.”
While McCloud is encouraged by the rapid uptake of some of the solutions offered by Future Food System, he’s also aware that widespread acceptance only comes with time. He points to his experience with induction cooktops, a key initiative in the move towards electrified kitchens and away from natural gas. Although Breathe has been incorporating these in residential projects since 2016, it’s only recently that the technology has become (somewhat) accepted.
“We used to have massive resistance from real estate agents and developers but now, it’s not a conversation anymore,” he says. “It’s going into everything around Melbourne. But when we work in different cities, they ask for gas because that’s what the market expects. Just as the market in Melbourne shifted, we need to wait for other markets to come along for the journey.”
Although it’s Bakker’s name on the documentary, Jo Barrett and Matt Stone – Bakker’s business partners and the house’s live-in cooks – are equally central to the Future Food System story. During the project, the then-couple fed themselves and guests with produce grown onsite.
Their creations included falafel-type balls enriched with crickets (the insects are a cheap, fast-growing protein that can be raised domestically); an ice-cream analogue starring “milk” made from the fast-growing tuber, tiger nut; and seafood dishes showcasing marron, yabbies and trout grown aquaponically. While this limited larder was challenging, the chefs admit the experience proved ultimately rewarding. “I gained more confidence and grew more as a chef in the time I was at the house than I did in my entire cooking career,” says Barrett.
“I think we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible,” says Stone.
In food circles, Melbourne chef Andrew McConnell of the Trader House Group (Cutler & Co, Cumulus Inc) watched on with interest. In January, McConnell and co-owner Jo McGann employed Bakker as a consultant to help them tackle waste within their business. The group’s food waste is now being collected and turned into organic fertiliser by ag-tech business Bardee; traditional paper has been swapped out for tree and plastic free “paper” from I Am Not Paper; and they are about to switch to large-format, kegged milk supplied via Tasmanian-based initiative, The Udder Way.
Although McConnell and McGann were familiar with Bakker’s work, seeing Future Food System in the flesh crystallised their decision to get him intimately involved with their business.
“If we were doing this project without Joost, we would have been Googling ‘sustainable templates hospitality’ and getting who knows what,” says Anna Augustine, project manager for Trader House Group. “He … knows people that you don’t find through normal channels.”
But not all the solutions found in Greenhouse are quite so blue sky. When I visited the project in April of this year, Stone and Barrett had moved out, so the food production side of things had slowed down. Between being kept awake at night by both the surprisingly loud chirping of crickets, and drunken passersby tapping on my window at midnight, I took solace in spying more homespun solutions throughout the house. The low-flush cisterns in the bathroom seemed easy enough to implement; and the Greenhouse fridge was stocked with reusable containers, just like any other house.
Greenhouse by Joost opens in Victorian cinemas on 10 November and nationally 17 November
This article was amended on 11 November 2022 because the Durra Panel factory is located in Bendigo, not Ballarat as an earlier version said. A reference to Jo McGann’s role within the Trader House group was changed to co-owner.
