Australia keeps building some of the biggest homes on Earth – around 240 square metres on average, with custom builds regularly hitting 300 to 400 – right as climate events intensify, insurance gets tighter, and the construction supply chain starts showing real limits. That tension sits at the heart of our chat with Sonja Markovic, CEO and co-founder of Evitat, a startup helping architects, designers, builders and clients navigate sustainable building materials with far less guesswork and far more evidence. Sonja's journey started close to home. After a cyclone damaged her Queensland house, she set out to rebuild with better materials, and discovered just how hard it is. We talk candidly about why 'just choose better materials' is rarely simple on a real project. Lead times, cost blowouts, procurement habits, compliance questions and market incentives all push teams back to familiar products, and the playing field isn't level: conventional materials have had decades of subsidies and support that biomaterials haven't. We also dig into who's really shaping our homes, and why so many Australians consult a real estate agent before an architect when deciding what to build. Sonja breaks down how material passports can become a building passport that records what was specified and why, so decisions don't disappear when a project changes hands. We explore co-benefits that matter to everyday people but often get lost in a spreadsheet: mould resistance through better moisture management, healthier indoor air for asthma and allergies, durability, and resilience without defaulting to a concrete-and-steel bunker mentality. From there, we zoom out to the system. We cover what Europe is getting right with top-down targets for circularity and reuse, how government procurement could unlock circular construction here, why biomaterials need strong agricultural inputs to scale, and how insurance could become a surprising lever for better building standards. Sonja also walks us through Evitat's agentic AI workspace, designed to help teams interrogate a material schedule in plain language, attach evidence to sustainability claims and reduce the research burden without replacing professional judgement. We even tackle the elephant in the room: AI's footprint, data centres, and the need for efficiency and transparency. If you care about low-tox healthy homes, embodied carbon, circularity and practical pathways to better construction in Australia, this one is for you. Subscribe, share it with someone planning a build or fit-out, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation. Recorded at CoLabs in Notting Hill. Keen to learn more about Evitat? website Sonja's LinkedinThis episode is sponsored by CoLabs Australia. Want to get involved at CoLabs? Early-stage founder working in bio, climate or deep tech? Check out CoLabs programs here.Need a hand growing your venture? From validating ideas and finding the right talent to sales, comms and marketing, the CoLabs team can help. Get in touch.Keep Following the Pattern Sam's InstagramSubstackCoLabs CoLabs NewsletterThis is an evolving experiment. The Strange Attractor is a living experiment supported by CoLabs, a practice exploring the fertile edge where art, science, technology and philosophy meet. Like the ecosystems we're part of, this project is designed to evolve. Every conversation changes the next one. If there’s a question you’d like us to explore, a guest we should invite, or a theme you think deserves more attention, drop us a line. We’re especially interested in the spaces between disciplines – the ecotones where unexpected ideas emerge. If you’re building something thoughtful, beautiful or regenerative, or simply wrestling with questions that matter, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks for listening. Until next time, stay curious!
