Daryl Taylor: Earthship Futures- Radical Design for Community and Life

The Black Saturday mega-firestorm was a natural disaster of proportions that are impossible to imagine for anyone who was not directly affected by it. The fires were so strong that they produced their own climate conditions, fireballs traveling in the air dozens of kilometers away from the initial flames from which they emerged. 

Daryl Taylor lost his home in Kinglake Victoria. With a strong history of community and radical design practice he has pulled off an incredible project. In terms of design, Daryl believes we need to ‘shift from moving fast and breaking things to living here and making friends. What started as a nightmare, continued as a dream and ended up as the first council- approved Earthship in Victoria- a type of radically sustainable, off-grid home constructed from natural and upcycled materials. Built through international workshops and a unique innovative design process. Fire-resistant. Radical Design.

The conversation explores how community-led design and architecture can support socio-ecological restoration and regenerativity, post-disaster community recovery and discovery, and social and emotional resilience. Drawing on lived experience, the speakers will examine undisciplined and fringe design knowledge, co-liberatory climate-responsive design processes and practices, and the role of design in rebuilding both physical and social infrastructure in disaster-vulnerable and -impacted regions. The event took the form of a moderated dialogue followed by audience Q&A and discussion. *We were also joined by Serenity Hill, a food sovereignty community activist.

This is part one of two episodes of this special event. Part two will be published in the next podcast episode.

 

Daryl Taylor

Daryl Taylor is a pioneering Melbourne-based builder, educator, and community leader, known for constructing Victoria’s first council-approved Earthship in Kinglake—a radically sustainable, fire-resistant home built from recycled materials after losing his own in the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. As a lived-experience mental health and neurodivergency advocate, he has shaped policy and education in community development, disaster resilience, and participatory design across government, NGO, and academic sectors, teaching at five Melbourne universities and co-authoring influential works on post-disaster recovery. Daryl’s work—spanning eco-design, permaculture, and community-led resilience—has earned national awards and features in ABC News and Grand Designs Australia, while his initiatives like Facing Fire, Biocultural Futures, and Retro-Futures continue to inspire sustainable, adaptive living in the age of climate change.

Serenity Hill

Serenity is co-founder of the Open Food Network, and Director on the Open Food Network board. Serenity’s work with the Open Food Network focuses on sector and enterprise development – advocacy, research and project development and implementation to expand regenerative agriculture in Australia and the values-based supply networks that undergird it. Serenity has extensive experience in policy development in government most recently in climate adaptation, and in delivery of large-scale projects for government clients. Serenity comes from long lines of farmers on both sides of her family.  She is a regenerative farmer, passionate about developing solutions that deal with the multitude of barriers to expansion of ecological farming across the country. She works opportunistically and strategically at multiple levels to enable practical and groundbreaking action.

 

PODCAST CREDITS:

Hosted by: Oliver Vodeb/ Memefest​. 

Music: Thanks to Bait for their song Property Law. Two best friends meeting seasonally in bucolic surrounds to generate improvised music. Property Law recognises the Indigenous peoples of the world's relationship to land. As in, "we don't own the land. The land owns us." Each of us is only passing through. Empires, Epochs come & go, but the spirit of the land persists.