In conversation with architect Jiri Lev | The Examiner | November 1, 2025 - video Dailymotion

The Examiner

Reporter Joe Colbrook spoke with architect Jiri Lev about his prototype home Tasmanian House 3, and housing more broadly. Video by Joe Colbrook

Transcript

00:00It's no secret that Tasmania is in the grip of a housing crisis. However, this house here in Ross

00:16might just hold the key to solving it. Measuring just 60 square meters and made out of local

00:22sustainable materials, it's designed to be environmentally friendly, healthy and of course

00:28cheap to build. It was conceived as a sort of model or prototype affordable dwelling that

00:36fits on 60 square meters so it can be built in anybody's backyard. It was also designed

00:43to be buildable by a single person. From the outside it looks very much like many

00:48of Tasmania's existing Georgian era homes and that's no accident. A house should be

00:53off its place I think. I don't want to introduce anything new and god forbid my own ideas into

00:58how a village or town should look or what its character should be. I think I like to look

01:04at a place with respect and sort of continue on with what is good about it. I can't say

01:09that you can just pick any Australian village and just do what they've done before because

01:14it might not end well but obviously this particular town is beautiful Georgian township. Lots of

01:22history, lots of beautiful homes that tourists come here from around the world to see. So yeah I definitely

01:28looked towards that and I think also the Georgian architecture is uniquely suited to the Tasmanian

01:35landscapes. They're very kind of European-like so adaptation of European architecture makes a lot of

01:41sense here. The home, dubbed Tasmanian House 3, is the latest in architect Yuri Lev's designs that

01:48he's released to the public. His previous iteration, Tasmanian House 2, was a 120 square meter homestead

01:55style dwelling and although the current design has half the floor area you don't really notice it

02:02thanks to a combination of space-saving furniture, thoughtful designs and high ceilings. As with the previous

02:09house it features predominantly natural materials that are easy for anyone to source and in theory

02:16is capable of being assembled by just one person over a period of a few months. All these design

02:21choices mean the home comes with a comparatively low price tag to build. Mr Lev estimates it cost him

02:28about $110,000 to build whereas professional builders quoted in the vicinity of $300,000. There's

02:36a variety of reasons why people want something like this so obviously the most pressing reason may be

02:43the economy but there will be definitely the health aspect you know it's big. Something like this if

02:51because it's relatively non-conventional it's so conventional but it's non-conventional from the

02:56today's builder perspective. I was quoted you know in the vicinity of $350,000 to build this granny flat

03:03you know and that apparently is the price of any granny flat at the moment, $300-ish. So just because I'm

03:09using natural materials, I'm using solid timber flooring and that sort of stuff, it seems a little bit out of

03:14ordinary to your commercial builders. So I think sometimes people who really are conscious of what they want to

03:21live in, in terms of health and some sort of ethos, often have to actually you know roll up their sleeves and do it

03:28themselves. They struggle to get it done quickly, cheaply and you know and well. I guess that's the old

03:36adage isn't it? Yeah. So you have to do it yourself I suppose at the moment.

03:40In many ways, Mr. Lev's designs can be seen as something of a protest. A protest against the

03:46over-reliance on harsh artificial substances like PFAS which may be causing sick building syndrome.

03:52A protest against a building industry he says is taking the power away from the owner occupiers.

03:58And a protest against poor suburban design which in some ways is down to vanity.

04:05Either you have the suburbs where every house looks the same and that wouldn't be bad if it was nice

04:10same but it's bad same, I dare say. And then you have the opposite you know particularly in the more

04:15well-off suburbs or ones where the building fabric was put together over a century or more. You will

04:21see this huge like disconnection between the styles and designs and even colors and materiality. It just

04:26makes no sense. So a good example is somewhere like the you know richest suburbs of Sydney like

04:32Walkloos and Double Bay. You go into some of these streets and and you will see buildings that cost

04:38you know tens of millions easily and to build and each one of them is even beautiful at times but

04:46completely disjointed from its surroundings even though the architects might disagree. They just don't

04:51speak to each other. They each one for themselves to show off the the owner's you know I don't know taste in

04:58art and what not individuality and then therefore this very exclusive suburb ends up looking like

05:04a rubbish tip to me you know. I always say every child knows if you mix all the colors you're going

05:08to end up with gray and that's what's happening to a lot of the suburbs. So how do you stop everything

05:14ending up this metaphorical shade of gray without hindering development and thus worsening the housing

05:20crisis? Yeah I would look at the the best merits of of each existing let's say suburb or urban unit and

05:31try to try to put together maybe like a design guidelines or manual about what's best what's

05:36the desirable character and that could be something as simple as roof colors and roof pitch like that's

05:41for instance something that's quite commonly done in a Czech Republic where I was born you will find that

05:47you don't get many restrictions but yeah the roof color is always red it's always a terracotta roof

05:53and the walls will be let's say you know some pastel color or something like it makes a huge difference

05:59two simple rules and the whole place looks like somewhere you want to be and people even take photos you know

In conversation with architect Jiri Lev | The Examiner | November 1, 2025

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