The making of a house that can withstand cyclones, floods and bushfires

Every storm season Australian insurer Suncorp gets inundated with claims. Leo Burnett's response to this problem was to develop a house that can withstand extreme weather conditions, which occur with increasing regularity due to climate change. In the second episode of Designing for Impact, CEO and Group ECD of Frost*collective, Vince Frost, speaks to Leo Burnett Associate Creative Director Marijke Spain about One House to Save Many — the D&AD Impact award-winning Suncorp project that brought together a group of experts to prototype and test what could be Australia’s first home to withstand fires, floods and cyclones. Spain talks about the development of the project and how they pitched their idea to their client.

“It was our idea from the agency, not the other way around” says Spain. “Suncorp asks for a brief every storm season up in Queensland where they’re based, when there are far too many insurance claims that come in each year from people being ill-prepared. All they want to do is get out there with a message to say that you can prevent unnecessary claims and save both you and us and money, and that’s where the thought came from. Queensland has this ‘she'll be alright’ attitude; they think because they’ve been through so many disasters they’ll get through the next one, but we went to them and said that climate change is making these disasters increasingly worse and more frequent and there probably will be a stage where you won’t be right and you do need to prepare better.”

In a new series with the Designing for Impact podcast and D&AD, host Vince Frost, explores the role of creativity and design in transforming the way we live. Listen to the first episode, where D&AD Chairman Tim Lindsay discusses the Impact programme and the history of purpose driven work at D&AD, here.