I visited Michael and Sally Cox that morning at their unfinished house on an estate near rural Sunbury. It stood out because of the grand timber windows and entrance door. Recycled. Removed from the walls of several Melbourne suburban villas before the structures were bulldozed and the blocks levelled to make way for medium-density development. Such is life in any big metropolis. 

Melbourne has a long and healthy tradition of recycling building materials from demolition. There is a range of accessible businesses supplying bricks, roofing tiles, timber, flooring and architectural salvage to an interested marketplace. Michael and Sally were able to tap this rich vein of product to buy the materials they wanted. This is good, I thought, but it worried me a little that, out here on this estate, the Coxs seemed to be the only ones using recycled materials. So much for my ‘interested marketplace’.

“Most of our f#%*!! neighbours think we transported the whole f##%*!! house to the f#%*!! block,” said Michael, restricting himself to a mere trio of expletives. Oh, one other thing about Michael Cox. No sentence escapes the embellishments of the worst in four-letter fulminations and no exceptions of company are made.

And yet he’s right on this point. The very thought occurred to me when I first arrived. It has the aura of a farmhouse with its beckoning verandahs and familiar textures. It helps that the windows and doors - though original period pieces - are not a riot of joinery detail. This is the mistake of some reproduction shops: that they offer house-on-the hill features for every house in the valley. The restraint is particularly pleasing on the Cox dwelling. The entry and the gable bay windows have original leadlight glazing, but the structural elements of Federation architecture are left uncluttered and please the critical eye.

Michael and Sally resolved to use recycled materials at the planning stage. Why? What influences informed this choice? Michael’s business is recycled motor parts. He operates Laser Warehouse in Airport West. “Three percent,” he insists. “Only three percent of replacement parts in Australian auto workshops is secondhand. Think of the waste. Think of the potential.” To this cogent claim he added a fester of profanity in the belief it wouldn’t stand alone. But it does. Quite nicely.

Having roamed Melbourne to see what architectural salvage was on offer, the Coxs settled on a collection of items from Select Salvage in Kensington. The windows purchased hailed from diverse buildings, but were used in a manner that did not punish the differences. What was lost by non-adherence to a rigid architectural style was gained in the clever use of banked double-hung windows to suggest length under verandahs. These rooms have better natural light than original Federation bedrooms.

Nick Kritikos from Select Salvage became, according to the Coxs, a mentor in their quest for recycled building materials. I questioned Kritikos as to what motivates the market’s choice of recycled materials. “Passion,” said Kritikos. A didactic forefinger hovered. “People who use recycled have a passion for the form and substance of recycled materials. The new equivalent – even an honest copy, doesn’t move them the same way.” Andy Mineur, from Urban Salvage in Spotswood, supplied the Coxs with a distinctive wide floorboard many anticipate in a Federation-style dwelling. It is a board with a 140mm cover milled from recycled structural messmate and it wears its scars and age with a kind of battered glory. Recycled messmate has warm coffee tones with wisps of feature and the occasional mark of attrition. The Coxs love their floor but Michael still calls Andy and unburdens a benediction of oaths whenever he needs advice. “Just for practice,” he shrugs.

The Coxs recall friends who said they were ‘mad’ for using recycled materials. Key tradesmen, though, were supportive of their project. Their builder, Phil Collins, has a fondness for old windows and solid doors – a sympathy that helped him persevere both with some difficulties in framing them and with a regular flourish of malediction from Michael. “From a builder’s perspective,” claimed Collins, “windows can be a worry. We need clients who can take some of the restoration tasks on themselves.” Loose parting bead, frayed cords and the minor mysteries of double-hung sash windows are not for the timid. But neither is owner-building.

So what motivates people’s choice of recycled? A deep-seated belief in sustainability in building? A fondness for the past that is a little bit fanciful? Or is it a genuine sympathy with an artisan age? Kritikos maintains that you sell an item along with its own history. “They (buyers) have to know where it comes from; whether it’s a factory, a mansion or an institution – which one, and where? They want the window, they want the door, but they want the storyline just as bad”. 

Ed Ewers of North Melbourne firm Architecture Matters believes the aesthetic character of recycled timber and its green credentials are its main appeal to clients. “We suggest the product, the clients follow. Some are cautious, others willing. Either way, at the end of the process, disappointments are rare.” Ewers maintains that, for architects at least, the sustainability ethic is the primary motivation for specifying recycled product. “Everyone in our office gets the warm fuzzies over recycled timber projects, even if our clients sensibilities are more focussed on the look.”

I read Martin Johnson’s byohouse.com.au for insights and I was reminded of the important pioneering role of Alastair Knox. Knox built with recycled materials in the bush suburbs of Melbourne at a time when councils refused to approve buildings that used recycled bricks or recycled timbers – insisting they be new. There was a confusion of reasons for this stance. As a postwar society Australians had no lingering affection for the immediate past, mixed feelings for old-Europe traditions – and yet there was no broad embrace of modernism. This marked the beginning of the ‘style wars’ between councils and progressive builders and architects. 

Despite opposition, Alastair Knox and others in his company gave life to the practice of re-use of building materials acquired from demolition. It was Knox’s view that choice of materials – including mudbrick – constituted a philosophical position. To Knox, stepping out of the mainstream and making this choice was proof of an inherent spirituality. It was, in Martin Johnson’s estimation, affirmation of being essentially alternative; of resisting banality, conformity and consumerism. In Australia, Knox became a pioneer of the new ethic of sustainability.

As a small movement in the 1950s and 1960s, it begat a similar trend in inner-city suburbs in the 1970s. Terrace houses which had been cheaply modified and partitioned for extended-family living in the post-war years were purchased by young urban professionals as new fringe suburbs absorbed the growing population. They sought to replace original features - many decorative - removed or destroyed in the name of utility. Salvage dealers began to stock and sell cast-iron lacework, panelled doors and pine mouldings. Paint-stripping businesses emerged. Bare wood, bare brick, stone and earth became the new textures of the 1970s.

Real estate booms in the 1980s accelerated this restoration trend to the next band of suburbs with large villas and bungalows on sprawling blocks. Flat roofed additions built in earlier years to cater for large families became passé and were torn down. Additions were re-crafted to repeat the roof profiles of the core building; old roof tiles were purchased to effect a seamless continuity; bricks, windows, doors and decorative elements were matched in homage to Victorian or Edwardian style. 

“It became a bit derailed,” said Kritikos, the forefinger stabbing air. “I blame the yuppies. Plain but honest weatherboards (houses) from the 1930s were given an Edwardian make-over - picket fence, verandah fretwork, leadlight doors, the full monty - all in the name of the market.” He paused as though remembering something else.” But it was good for business,” he concluded.

His words reminded me of my own experience with the late 1980s market. On board climbed the obsessives. ‘Originals’ were lauded over ‘reproductions’ with a how-dare-you smugness. Callers asked you to locate panelled doors and mouldings with exact specifications. Close was not good enough; everything had to be ‘authentic’ down to the original paint chip from the hallway taken to the shop to be colour-matched. Shudder. The trend faltered along with the real estate boom which had spawned its worst excesses. By the early 1990s the ‘seamless transition’ imperative had lost its intensity - often ignored by architects as a pointless constraint in residential addition design.

The preference for original architectural pieces or recycled timber floors has probably re-discovered its alternative motivations; a hunger for the mysteries of life; it’s unexpectedness; a joy in the individuality of all things; and a bond with the artisan past. There is lately an acceptance that an addition to an existing residence can still be sympatico with the rest of the house without fooling friends as to where the graft takes root. I think those yuppies Kritikos spotted came along for the ride in the new millennium too - and that’s more than OK. It makes for a wider gene pool. There are only so many true believers. It worries me as I drive around the Coxs’ estate that the owner-builders are overlooking this wonderful resource because it’s a bit tricky, has a bit of a learning curve and all your friends are saying ‘Don’t, you’re mad’.

.....by Dave Hutchens
 

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