Skip to content

The Fifth Estate: utecture will tell you how much it costs, to you and the climate

A new digital construction design tool - utecture - allows people to see the carbon footprint of each extra en suite or butler’s pantry as they design their dream home in real time

Introduced to the Australian and New Zealand markets earlier this year, the Donovan Group spinoff is a pre-construction design platform that tracks key metrics such as prices, embodied emissions and expected operational energy use during the final design phases.

Chief executive officer of the company, Gavin Tonnet, says the technology slashes the time and costs incurred by the builder when customers request alterations and add ons. He says the standard back-and-forth during the design phase can account for 14 per cent of the non-construction home building costs. His company has spent five years refining the software that can cut down the process of re-quoting design tweaks from 10-12 weeks to an hour. Read more here.