Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.
And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boxes
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At a time when the average house price in Melbourne has hit $313,000, one young woman has built herself a mudbrick home in the city for $20,000.
The owner was inspired to become an ownerbuilder after visiting friends in country New South Wales who rented a small and primitive cottage in the bush.
This 27 year-old is not alone.
The Victorian Building Commission says the value of domestic building in Victoria is now running at around
$5.7billion a year and 28 per cent of that is done by
"owner builders"... for a total economic value to the state of $1.59billion a year.
Owner-builders do not necessarily do the work themselves, but they co-ordinate the tradesmen and take responsibility for the job.
This picture-perfect house was built as a dual occupancy development in the back yard of an existing house. 
 The owner spent $2000 on foundations. 
 A friend with carpentry skills helped build theframe, she had roof trusses made to her specifications, then she bought mud bricks from Eltham and laid them herself in five weeks.
It cost her about $7000 to reach "lock-up'' stage. 
 Her 6 metre x 4 metre house has an open-plan kitchen and living area downstairs, with a bedroom and bathroom in the roof space.
The loft ceiling was lined with papier mache, which was time-consuming but cheap, environmentally friendly and offered great insulation.
Polished floorboards and old church windows, picked up for $90 each from newspaper classifieds, are features of the cottage.
It has a corrugated iron roof housing solar hotwater and solar electricity panels. 
 The bulider wanted her house to be self-sufficient inas many ways as possible. 
 She bought a gas fridge and calculated that if she went without a hairdryer and toaster she could generate enough solar power with a small $2500 system.
Some people had trouble coping with a female owner-builder. 
 When this owner biulder was designing and building her kitchen benches and cupboards, one salesman told her to send her father in with the measurements.
"The only time I got respect was when I walked in with my workclothes completely covered in mud,'' she said.
"I love living in a small house. 
 I never lose anything and it's easy to clean. 
 I just have to learn to keep my junk to a minimum.'' http://www.byohouse.com.au/projects/cottage.htm
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Embodied energy is the energy consumed by all of the processes associated with the production of a building, from the mining and processing of natural resources to manufacturing, transport and product delivery. Embodied energy does not include the operation and disposal of the building material. This would be considered in a life cycle approach. Embodied energy is the ‘upstream’ or
‘front-end’ component of the lifecycle impact of a home.
http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/fs52.html
PER EMBODIED ENERGY MJ/kg MATERIAL
Kiln dried sawn softwood
Kiln dried sawn hardwood
3.4
2.0
Air dried sawn hardwood
Hardboard
Particleboard
MDF
Plywood
Glue-laminated timber
Laminated veneer lumber
Plastics – general
PVC
Synthetic rubber
Acrylic paint
Stabilised earth
Imported dimension granite
Local dimension granite
Gypsum plaster
Plasterboard
Fibre cement
Cement
Insitu Concrete
Precast steam-cured concrete
Precast tilt-up concrete
Clay bricks
Concrete blocks
AAC
Glass
Aluminium
Copper
Galvanised steel
These figures should be used with caution because:
2.0
1.9
2.5
1.5
3.6
12.7
170
100
3
5.9
2.9
4.4
4.8*
5.6
1.9
0.5
24.2
8.0
11.3
10.4
11.0
11.0
90
80.0
110.0
61.5
0.7
13.9
The actual embodied energy of a material manufactured and used in Melbourne will be very different if the same material is transported by road to Darwin.
Aluminium from a recycled source will contain less than ten per cent of the embodied energy of aluminium manufactured from raw materials.
High monetary value, high embodied energy materials, such as stainless steel, will almost certainly be recycled many times, reducing their lifecycle impact.
CSIRO research has found that materials used in the average Australian house contain the following levels of embodied energy:
Materials with the lowest embodied energy intensities, such as concrete, bricks and timber, are usually consumed in large quantities. Materials with high energy content such as stainless steel are often used in much smaller amounts. As a result, the greatest amount of embodied energy in a building can be either from low embodied energy materials such as concrete, or high embodied energy materials such as steel.
ASSEMBLY
Floors
Elevated timber floor
110mm concrete slab on ground
200mm precast concrete T beam/infill
Roofs
Timber frame, concrete tile, plasterboard ceiling
Timber frame, terracotta tile, plasterboard ceiling
Timber frame, steel sheet, plasterboard ceiling
Source: Lawson Buildings, Materials, Energy and the Environment (1996)
ALTERNATIVES
PER EMBODIED ENERGY MJ/m²
293
645
644
251
271
330

There are alternatives to the typical, chemical-laden, CO2 disaster typically built in Australia at the present time. Some of these have been explored in far greater detail overseas, partly through necessity, and partly because of access to resource, political will and the presence of multinationals able to exploit the local population.
For example:
Building in Palestine has all but ceased due to the blockade of the country by Israel. However, the people, ever-resourceful, have learned to do make do with very little. Here, some of the dirt excavated from the constant tunnel building (to smuggle goods in and out of the country) is put to use to build a home. There is little timber or corrugated iron, so techniques have been developed to build homes almost entirely out of mud-bricks. This is a very cheap and simple building technique that virtually anyone can learn and put to use. Small communities can band together and assist each other in the building of homes, which means virtually no money has to change hands. This has enormous economic repercussions, because without mortgages and crippling debt, people are free to take control of their lives and engage in more satisfying activities. Without huge debt, people are not required to spend long hours away from home and family, and can do things like grow their own vegetables and nurture their children.
The domed house above was built in a poor area in the US, where many people live pretty basic lives, tied to bank mortgages. Such a house is cheaper to cool in summer, warmer to heat in winter, has very little embodied energy, and can potentially last hundreds of years. Of course, it is hard to believe that a house like this could ever be considered normal in Australia!
The house on the left is a bungalow built in North America and is also a cheap, effective shelter that has very little embodied energy.
With this type of building, the only limiting factor is your imagination – and the local planning and building codes of course!