What we build matters: a sustainable home is gentler on the environment and, ultimately, saves on running costs – good news for the earth and our back pockets. If you’re looking to build green, prepare to be inspired by these 10 exceptional eco-friendly homes by architects on Houzz, all of which have been shortlisted for the Sustainability prize in the prestigious Houses Awards 2022.
Houses Awards
Architect: Bligh Graham Architects
Project: LiveWorkShare
Location: Samford Village, Queensland
Photography: Christopher Frederick Jones
Architect’s notes: Specific environmental sustainable design strategies in this project included:
- Polished concrete for thermal mass.
- High-level windows for hot air exhausting, with a steep roof for letting winter sun into the shared component.
- Solid shutters for sun control and privacy (in lieu of curtains) to enable good ventilation at all times.
- Vine trellises to provide security to accessible windows and enable ventilation when vacant or at night.
Houses Awards
- Single-room deep-plan design [which has a high ratio of internal floor area to external wall area, where horizontal distances from external walls are much greater than floor-to-floor heights], with openings to at least two sides for excellent cross ventilation.
- Full summer shading of all openings.
- Operable shading to the courtyard.
- Recycled hardwood for floor framing and pergolas.
- Plantation timbers elsewhere.
- Non-toxic finishes.
- High level of insulation.
- Ventilated cavity-wall system.
- ‘Green’ concrete.
- 10kw [solar] PV system.
- Food gardens.
- Extensive vertical garden trellises for shading and biophilic benefits.
- Hand-sorting of construction waste to enable recycling.
Houses Awards
Architect: Inbetween Architecture
Project: Engawa House
Location: Doncaster, Victoria
Photography: Peter Bennetts
Architect’s notes: With this project, the approach was practical and affordable with the goal of improving the thermal performance, comfort and amenity of the 100-year-old house through targeted and high-impact interventions in order to improve the longevity of the home and save it from demolition.
The additional floor area was only 15 square metres, but unlocked potential for vastly improved amenity. An additional 50 square metres were adapted and retrofitted to support the outcome. Opting for nooks over rooms and the overlapping of circulation with amenable functions (for example, with the dining and European laundry) allowed a very compact footprint.
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Houses Awards
The general approach was to retain and work with the existing house and layout. Reuse was prioritised – we adjusted and refinished the flooring, kept most of the existing layout and embraced mismatching components. Demolition and replacement was kept to a minimum.
“Do I really need it?” was the question the client constantly asked themselves throughout the process, from additional square metreage to nice-to-haves. Conscious decisions were made. The only nice-to-have they couldn’t resist was the locally crafted cedar bath, which they love, and which also served as the foundation of the bathroom design and experience.
Houses Awards
Architect : OOF! Architecture
Project: Gantry House
Location: Newport, Victoria
Photography: Tatjana Plitt
Architect’s notes: Sustainability was integral to design considerations and ranged from overall scale, form and layout to material selections. The client required pleasant living temperatures, natural light and ventilation all year round, plus capacity for solar PV [photovoltaic] panels and hot water (in stage-two work).
- Demolition was used where necessary and the old house was kept where possible.
- Primary construction is reverse brick veneer (with recycled bricks) to maintain the old house’s weatherboard character externally, while providing thermal mass for superior comfort internally and the feel of an old brick warehouse.
Houses Awards
- Form and pitch of the main roof optimises north orientation and area for solar panels, and also allows efficient rainwater collection.
- Private areas like bedrooms and bathrooms are compact in area or reorganised to allow flexibility without additional area, and corridors are avoided. Living spaces derive generosity from the overall volume of the shared central space, rather than from increased area.
- A spine of north-facing operable clerestory windows at the top of the roof provide natural light all day, all year.
- Natural cross ventilation provided throughout, including clerestory windows that purge warm air from the house.
- Ceiling fans operate in summer and winter modes. No air conditioning was provided.
- Walls and roofs are highly insulated.
- Windows are timber-framed, double-glazed and draft-sealed.
Houses Awards
Architect: Bent Architecture
Project: Mt Eliza House
Location: Mt Eliza, Victoria
Photography: Derek Swalwell
Architect’s notes: The Mt Eliza house demonstrates excellence in environmentally sustainable design.
The home is designed along an east-west axis, with living spaces orientated to face the northern sun for passive heating, while opposing north-south windows facilitate passive cooling.
Timbercrete bricks are employed extensively on the ground floor; they are an eco-friendly, lightweight brick made of waste timber and masonry binders.
Houses Awards
Accoya is a cradle-to-cradle, certified sustainable timber that is used for wall cladding inside and out.
An expansive [solar] PV array and battery storage allows mechanical heating and cooling systems to be sustainably operated, without the need for natural gas (which was abolished from the site). In fact, the home is a net-energy producer. A 43,000-litre water tank hidden beneath the garden in the rear yard sustains household and garden needs.
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Houses Awards
Architect: Archier
Project: Court House
Location: Yackandandah, Victoria
Photography: Rory Gardiner
Architect’s notes: Court House is a net-neutral, base-level Passive house. It’s active in that it does not completely cut itself off from the surrounding environment.
In winter, it requires a marginal amount of heat, which is fuelled by the house’s solar panels, so it is net-neutral in its power usage. In summer, eaves on the north and west side limit sunlight into the house, while a heat-recovery ventilation system regulates the air within it.
The majority of the materials are local, with hardwood cladding and concrete coming from the area. The only materials sourced elsewhere were the SIP panels [structural insulated panels] from Canada and the BINQ windows, which were manufactured in Melbourne, Victoria.
Houses Awards
The SIPs we used are made with formaldehyde-free OSB [oriented strand board], manufactured from sustainably harvested timber.
The panels have a high R-Value and eliminate thermal bridging, creating a structural envelope with high thermal performance. They are also durable – both cyclone-rated and fire-retardant – which is crucial to building a house with both physical and cultural longevity, ensuring the embodied energy that goes into the project’s construction decreases over time.
Houses Awards
Architect: Leanhaus
Project: Marina’s House
Location: Claremont, Perth
Photography: Jody D’Arcy
Architect’s notes: In keeping with our lean philosophy, this design eliminated structural steel to reduce carbon emissions, cost and complexity, resulting in a structure that is entirely prefabricated using lightweight timber framing.
And in line with Passive House principles, it has high levels of insulation, airtightness of 0.84 air changes per hour, double-glazed windows and doors, and passive solar design that makes the most of northern orientation.
Houses Awards
Other features include mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, design for cross breezes, shading of north-facing windows, and ceiling fans in every room.
The house is well-ventilated throughout the shoulder seasons, while a double-header air-conditioning unit upstairs, with outlets in the mezzanine office and main bedroom, provides sufficient mechanical cooling during the hottest summer days.
The very compact building envelope minimises heat loss in winter when no additional heating is required; the house maintains minimum indoor temperatures of 20-degrees Celcius across the cooler months of the year.
Water efficiency is achieved through highly rated tapware and appliances, water-sensitive garden design and a gravel driveway for rainwater infiltration.
The house is located less than 100 metres from Claremont train station and shopping centre, thereby reducing car use. A single carport has provision for future EV charging.
Houses Awards
Architect: Melbourne Design Studios (MDS)
Project: The Hütt 01 Passivhaus
Location: Coburg, Victoria
Photography: Maitreya Chandorkar
Architect’s notes: Regenerative design, Passivhaus and biophilic principles are core values of this project, including considerations of being carbon-neutral/negative and near net-zero energy.
The house combines functional playfulness and attention to detail with highly sustainable construction techniques and materials. The resulting home showcases new construction technologies including CLT [cross-laminated timber] with natural wood-fibre insulation, triple-glazed windows, heat recovery ventilation, super-airtight building, ‘Passivehouse Premium’ certification, void spaces/mezzanines, a lot of recycled and/or natural materials, solar PV and batteries, green-roof and green-wall design, an aquaponics system and much more.
Houses Awards
Generally, all products selected are based on sustainability and/or embodied energy, for example recycled bricks (carbon zero), natural wood-fibre insulation and mass-timber structure (carbon negative), recyclable, natural oil-finish timber floors, mostly with cradle-to-grave certification.
Many other considerations have gone into this project, from site selection next to bike paths within short walking distance to a train station, and a car parking waiver/provision of only a single on-site carpark, with no additional on-street parking, providing extra garage space for bikes and scooters, which encourages other modes of transport.
Houses Awards
Architect: Owen Architecture
Project: Spring Hill House
Location: Brisbane, Queensland
Photography: Toby Scott
Architect’s notes: The family made the deliberate decision to move from a large house in a low-density suburb to this smaller site (160 square metres) to prioritise family finances and time and energy toward the children’s schooling.
The family have gone from two cars to one, which is now used very little, and are considering having no car at all, subject to kids’ sport travel.
Houses Awards
This site has never had a house on it, so adding it has increased the true density of the street.
Materials are plantation-timber structural products and fibre-cement cladding.
The house has a 5.55 kW photovoltaic [solar] system. The house has been carefully planned for appropriate thermal performance, including:
- Northern winter sun warms the downstairs concrete slab.
- Summer sun does not enter the house.
- All windows have sun/rain hoods.
Houses Awards
Architect: Architect George
Project: House in Tasmania (Big Red)
Location: Hobart, Tasmania
Photography: Max Combi
Architect’s notes: This project provides a new two-bedroom family home under 90 square metres. A small home was a key requirement of the client’s brief in order to live more sustainably.
Other than being connected to town electricity, the new home is self-sufficient. Rainwater tanks collect all potable and non-potable water and a septic system is installed on-site.
Minimal electricity is used for lighting, cooking and hot water.
Houses Awards
The passively designed two-pavilion home creates greater opportunities for access to natural light and cross ventilation. High-quality insulation and double-glazed windows and doors are used throughout. No artificial heating or cooling is installed.
Most importantly, this project shows what can be achieved with less. Less floor area. Less cost. Less material. This architecturally designed home is as financially attainable as a standard project home yet presents many more benefits – importantly a more sustainable outcome.
The project strives to demonstrate a better outcome for building cost-effective, contextually appropriate new homes throughout our Australian landscape.
Houses Awards
Architect: Alexander Symes Architect
Project: Pepper Tree Passive House
Location: Illawarra, NSW
Photography: Barton Taylor
Architect’s notes: Built to the Passive House standard, the project meets the five core criteria:
- Well-insulated.
- Airtight construction.
- High-performance glazing.
- Carefully detailed and constructed timber structure with no thermal bridges between internal and external areas.
- Heat-recovery ventilation system.
A Life-Cycle Assessment was conducted, which showed despite the higher amount of embodied energy associated with Passive House construction – due to the small, high-performance building envelope, low-embodied carbon material selection and significant on-site generated and exported renewable energy – the building’s environmental footprint is 64 percent less than a comparable built-as-usual home in the same climate zone.
Houses Awards
Other sustainability attributes include:
- Fully electric building (no gas).
- 100 percent GreenPower-accredited grid energy used.
- Heat-pump hot water.
- Induction cooktop.
- 12kW PV system with 14kWh battery.
- Triple-glazed, aluminium-clad timber windows.
- 4,000-litre rainwater tank, serving laundry and bathroom.
- Construction waste material fully diverted.
- No internal paint, zero-VOC and E0 finishes and materials used where possible.
- Endemic and edible landscape.
Your turn
Are you building a sustainable home? What has your experience been? Tell us in the Comments below. And don’t forget to save these images, like this story and join the conversation.
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