Across Australia, hundreds of thousands of households are racing to install home batteries, drawn by government subsidies and the promise of energy independence. Yet researchers studying nearly a century of housing literature have surfaced a quieter truth: the shape, orientation, and skin of a home determine its energy fate far more than any battery ever could. A case study in regional New South Wales demonstrated that when architects and engineers designed together from the beginning, storage needs shrank by nearly a fifth and costs fell by thousands of dollars. The lesson is ancient and arch