Call it Night of the Living McMansions from Down Under … an ingenious home deconstruction/rebuilding campaign in Australia, the Reincarnated McMansion Project, aims to resurrect the skeleton of a large, unsustainable home and form two smaller, green dwellings.

The idea behind the Reincarnated McMansion Project is somewhat similar to a job performed by a company that I profiled a couple weeks back, the California-based Deconstruction & ReUse Network. In that instance, a large Beverly Hills home was deconstructed (instead of demolished) and the salvageable remnants of the structure were donated to charitable organizations like Habitat for Humanity. The Reincarnated McMansion Project is similar in that a home will be carefully dismantled but the end result — two new, zero-emission homes — is quite unique.

 

The key concepts behind the Reincarnated McMansion Project, downsizing and upcycling, are being used to demonstrate to Aussie homeowners that bigger isn’t always better. Right now the project is in its infancy as an open-minded McMansion owner willing to have his or her home dismantled is still being sought out.

 

I can’t imagine tons of folks are chanting yes, sign me up, please! Audit, dismantle, and rebuild my house into two new houses while I go on a six-month vacation! but in a perfect world, the folks behind the Reincarnated McMansion project would have to turn droves of homeowners away. If you were living in an energy-guzzling palace of excess but plagued by green guilt would you be interested in partaking in something like this? One question I have: where exactly will the displaced McMansion family return to? Both homes or just one of them?

 

The all-star Aussie gold team behind the Reincarnated McMansion Project includes head visionary, Mathieu Gallois, environmental consultants from Habitation, and architects from Environa Studio.

 

I’ll keep you posted on the progress of the Reincarnated McMansion and in meantime, read up on the masterplan at the project’s homepage. 

 

Via [Re-Nest]