Backyard Beauties: Breathe and Modscape Break the Mould on Granny Flats

For years, small-scale prefabricated housing in Australia has laboured under a stigma: ugly, fast, cheap and awkward. Breathe director Jeremy McLeod and Modscape + Modbotics founder Jan Gyrn are betting that a self-funded, off-the-shelf modular side venture dubbed ‘Kiin’ can change that. “There are a lot of granny flat providers out there already, and most of the offerings are pretty grim,” McLeod says. “We want to give people the opportunity to buy a beautiful secondary home for their backyard, built in a factory using robots.” The idea has been years in the making but took full form after Victoria and New South Wales introduced planning pathways allowing a secondary home to proceed on eligible residential blocks without a full permit. That, according to the pair, means around 1.35 million blocks across the two states would be prime for the off-the-shelf modular offering. Off-the-shelf modular—by design The pitch is simple: fixed footprints, two palettes each and delivery within weeks rather than months. Buyers can choose from two models online, paying a small allocation fee for a site assessment. Speed is a motivator, too, McLeod says, as a conventional architect-designed backyard studio can take up to two and a half years from planning to handover, compared with roughly four weeks for Kiin. Mcleod says Gyrn, who founded Modscape + Modbotics two decades ago after working at Multiplex, “knows how to get stuff built”. He says Kiin is an extension of an early lesson learnt: fixed, repeatable designs succeed on the affordability front where customisation fails. ▲ Modscape founder Jan Gyrn (right) says making something this small look good is hard, but “Breathe have made it look gorgeous”. The range is limited to two models: the 32sq m Kiin Nest and the 52sq m Kiin One, each with two exterior and interior palettes, achieving a NatHERS rating of between 7.5 and 9 stars. The structure is built from timber floor, wall and roof cassettes assembled at Modscape + Modbotics’ factory, then craned onto site as a single volumetric module, precise enough that units do not need to be pre-assembled to check dimensional accuracy before leaving the factory. Cutting waste to near zero Gyrn says conventional Australian construction sends between 25 and 45 per cent of material to landfill, compared with about 3 per cent on Modscape + Modbotics’ existing projects. He expects Kiin’s fixed dimensions to push that closer to one per cent, “because we simply don’t incur waste”. A Kiin home also generates only 26kg of carbon emissions per square metre per occupant, based on a life cycle assessment, against a stated business-as-usual benchmark of 682kg for conventional residential construction. A side bet, not a pivot Kiin runs as a smaller, parallel venture alongside both companies’ core businesses, and is funded jointly by Breathe and Modscape + Modbotics. Delete McLeod says the model sidesteps the upfront design and consulting costs that usually eat into a homeowner’s budget before a bespoke secondary home is even approved. “Otherwise, before you know it, you’ve spent $100,000 on fees, on engineers, consultants, building surveyors,” he says. “You’ve burnt more than half your budget on consultants before anyone’s dug a hole in the ground.” Beyond the backyard McLeod says there is potential for a broader range of uses beyond the family backyard, including tourist accommodation, wineries and rural properties. He ays the homes are designed to perform across any climate zone in Victoria and New South Wales. He also believes homeowners near transport-oriented development sites and older owners who could use their superannuation to buy a Kiin unit for rental income alongside their pension could be among potential clients. “They might be asset-rich and cash-poor,” McLeod says. “They put this in their backyard and they’ve got a whole new revenue stream.” Pricing starts at $239,000 for the Kiin Nest and $299,000 for the Kiin One, with a $550 allocation fee for a refundable site assessment and staged payments of 20 per cent on signing, 70 per cent on completion of manufacture and 10 per cent at handover. ▲ The Modscape + Modbotics robotic production line, where the Kiin timber cassettes are assembled and craned onto site as a single module. Gyrn says they’ll initially “take a hit” on pricing but assumes there will be ongoing production rather than one-off delivery, with an eventual goal of building one unit a day. “We’ll aim for 250 a year as a starting point,” he says, adding that a dedicated production line would follow if demand justified it, with Perth and Hobart already flagged as future markets. A display unit is currently under construction at Modscape + Modbotics’ factory, giving buyers a finished example to inspect before ordering. Gyrn is already looking past the first units. “We’re aiming to have built 750 in three years, on track for one a day, with seven-day turnarounds,” he says. “The Melbourne factory would feed both New South Wales and Victoria. If there’s take-up and appetite, Queensland is a different market again. But once our new factory up there comes online, there’s an opportunity to look at a Queensland-specific design to suit the climate there.” Whether Kiin becomes more than a single product is still an open question. “If we think that there is a place in the market where there is a need that is unmet, then I suspect we’ll work together to meet that need,” McLeod says. Gyrn agrees: “If we can add value doing it, we’d absolutely collaborate on future opportunities.”

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Leon Della Bosca
Wed 30 Sep 26

Backyard Beauties: Breathe and Modscape Break the Mould on Granny Flats

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