Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 73 i Sanctuary: Modern Green Homes

HOUSE PROFILE Tathra, NSW AT A GLANCE - Compact home designed for holidays now and permanent living in the future - Two modules with link, all prefabricated - Careful material selection for sustainability and affordability “It was pretty surreal to see the Prefabulous trucks arrive and install the house onto the piers that had been completed about four weeks before.” – Jonathan Happold Many people dream of moving to the country in retirement, but not all make it happen. Kate Pickles and Jonathan Happold are both vets, and as scientists they share a strong desire to reduce their impact on the planet. During Covid, they started thinking seriously about moving to the country once they retired, inspired by Kate’s childhood on a farm. “Like many others during Covid we reassessed what's important, and the…

HOUSE PROFILE Putney, NSW AT A GLANCE - Passive House built with prefabricated CLT panels - Designed for a healthy indoor environment - Colourful, crafty and fun Susan and Louis Chan both work in holistic health and are inspired by creativity and making, so they brought a sense of curiosity and wonder to the creation of their new family home. Their block in Putney, Sydney, has three street frontages, bringing plenty of natural light and a sense of openness. Soon after acquiring the property with its existing small fibro house, Louis and Susan sought guidance from their architect and friend, Nina Still of Still Space Architecture, for their new build. The Chans had built a new home before, so they had clear goals for this project. It had to accommodate their…

What happens to modular buildings like relocatable school classrooms when they reach the end of their service life? A collaboration between Modularity by Rendine, the University of Melbourne and peak industry body prefabAUS, supported by Sustainability Victoria, has shown that with a bit of design creativity, they can be repurposed into new, functional living spaces. “By salvaging the steel frame from a 40-year-old school building and combining it with carefully selected sustainable materials, we developed a prototype modular home that embodies the principles of the circular economy,” explains Professor Tuan Ngo, Research Program Leader of the Building 4.0 Collaborative Research Centre at the university. The team aimed to break the ‘throwaway’ cycle in construction by keeping valuable materials in use for longer. At the same time, they were eager to…

PROFILE Promoting gender equity Rachael: For people who don’t know Parlour, can you explain how it started? Justine: Back in 2010, I was part of a team led by Naomi Stead that established a large-scale research project funded by the Australian Research Council. We wanted to understand what was happening to women in architecture. We knew they were disappearing from the profession, but there was little research into why. One year in, Naomi suggested I make a website to disseminate the research. We harnessed the power of the internet, and social media — which was relatively new then – and Parlour was born in order to share our findings and exchange knowledge. Parlour also aims to enable people to find agency and leverage, to make change in their own sphere. This…

1 Lead-free tapware From May 2026, the National Construction Code (NCC) will require all tapware to be lead-free. ABI Interiors is ahead of schedule, with several compliant models already available including the Sola Collection made from 316 stainless steel. Finishes include brushed copper, brushed brass and gunmetal, applied using physical vapour deposition (PVD), a process that bonds colour to create a scratch-resistant surface with fewer chemicals than traditional plating. The tapware is highly rated for water efficiency and comes with a 25-year structural warranty. Prices start at $305. abiinteriors.com.au 2 Clean walls, cleaner air Paint choice is about more than just colour. Taubmans Endure paints are engineered for long-lasting results, with a low-VOC, low-odour formula approved by the National Asthma Council Australia’s Sensitive Choice program. Endure is made with ‘advanced…

HOUSE PROFILE Smeaton, VIC AT A GLANCE - Small-footprint, 7.6-Star family home - Prefabricated structural insulated panels for speed and a high-quality thermal envelope - Practical and efficient spatial design Like so many people whose homes feature in Sanctuary, architect Matt Turner’s main goal for his family home was a warm, comfortable and healthy space. “Our first house was an old weatherboard miner’s cottage that was all we could afford at the time,” he says. “On the first stormy night, the roofing iron blew off and water leaked in. It was dark and cold and we battled with mould and possums. But we did some improvements and made a couple of warm, cosy spots – it showed us the potential for creating comfort on a budget.” Keen for the rural life, Matt and…

Offsite prefabrication was the perfect approach for the rebuilding of Empire Vale Public School, right on the Richmond River near Ballina in New South Wales. The school was one of six in the area devastated by floods in 2022. “The damage caused by the floods displaced a lot of people,” explains Jan Gyrn of Modscape + Modbotics, the prefab manufacturer behind the rebuilding of all six schools. “There was a huge lack of resources – both materials and workforce – in the area. And yet the school is a crucial asset for the Empire Vale community and it was important to get it up and running again as quickly as possible.” Teaming up with Pedavoli Architects, engineering firm DDEG and ADCO Constructions, Modscape + Modbotics was able to deliver a…

Founded back in 2013, Melbourne-based CarbonLite is a longstanding player in the prefabricated construction industry in Australia, and a pioneer of the rigorous Passive House standard in the country too. Co-founder Burkhard Hansen has always sought to push the boundaries, and together with partner builders, CarbonLite has delivered some of the country’s most energy-efficient homes. “These homes usually come at a premium though – often around $6,000 per square metre – putting them out of reach for most Australians,” says Tom Davies, CarbonLite’s Transformation and Partnerships Director. “While this demonstrates what’s possible, it won’t by itself achieve the scale of change we need in the industry. With homes responsible for around 21 per cent of Australia’s carbon emissions across their life cycle, the residential sector has to transform as a…

IDEAS & ADVICE Reducing carbon There is no getting around it. Our homes, as important and central to our lives as they undoubtedly are, remain one of the most carbon-intensive things we create. From the five tonnes of carbon dioxide generated every year by the average Australian home, to the estimated 200 tonnes or more of embodied carbon already released before the keys to a new home are even handed over, the residential building industry is one of the most carbon-intensive industries in Australia. If we are to meet Australia’s international commitments, all industries will need to figure out how to supply carbon-neutral products by 2050. And the sooner, the better. The good news is that we already have the knowledge and the technology to produce homes of much lower impact.…

AT A GLANCE - Comfortable home surrounded by nature - Flexible design for futureproofing for all stages of life - Physical and cognitive accessibility done sustainably and affordably - Repurposed prefabricated module, plus many other reused components HOUSE PROFILE Gold Coast, QLD ‘Ecovillage SDA’ is Australia’s first sustainable NDIS-approved specialised disability accommodation (SDA), a rigorous as-built assessment. Born out of a dignified desire to cater for specialist needs in a ‘normal’ home, its design exceeds the ecovillage’s codes and employs a Healthy House ethos for multichemical and electromagnetic sensitivity. In addition, it incorporates Design for Dementia, trauma-informed design, netpositive design principles, and cognitive accessibility. “If it isn’t accessible, it isn’t sustainable,” says architect and academic Alison McDonald, whose career has concentrated on sustainable as-built performance projects. This new house acts as a ‘living lab’,…

HOUSE PROFILE Alphington, VIC AT A GLANCE - 7.4-Star family home carefully designed around existing trees - Prefabricated for speed, efficiency and reduced waste - Floor plan designed to suit the block with north to the street Orchard House is a prefabricated dwelling that hits the sweet spot when it comes to design, buildability and performance. But needing to satisfy many competing requirements, it proved a complicated puzzle for design and build operation Arkit to solve. “There were numerous site-based parameters along with the brief,” says architect Andrew Fotia. “The finished house is a narrative of the balancing of all these factors.” It’s home to medical professionals Jacqueline and Charles, who moved to Australia from Canada with their two young sons. They bought a large block in Alphington, Melbourne, with a ramshackle old…

For the last 25 years, Victorian charity Kids Under Cover and prefab home manufacturer Ortech Industries have been teaming up and quietly making a difference to young people at risk of homelessness. “It all started in the early 2000s, after we sent some flat-packed homes to Lombok to help communities there rebuild in the wake of the Boxing Day tsunami,” Ortech Industries’ general manager Ainslee Haslemore says. “Kids Under Cover got in touch with us when they saw that story.” Since then, the partnership has seen over 600 purposebuilt, prefabricated studios installed in backyards around Victoria – and more recently in South Australia – to help families and carers in need of more space to accommodate the young people in their care. The one- and two-bedroom studios with bathrooms are…

IDEAS & ADVICE A new way to build The Fast Slow project began with a question that was both practical and philosophical: How can we make sustainable housing more accessible, while also nurturing wellbeing and community? As architects, academics, builders and artists, the Fast Slow team have long been fascinated by the intersection of design, sustainability, and social equity. But it was through working with earth, its texture, its timelessness, its grounding presence, that the deeper layers of this project were realised. Developed in collaboration with Mudtec, a leader in earth construction, and the University of Newcastle, the Fast Slow project is a research-driven initiative that combines a prefabricated eco-ply building structure with earth infill options. The goal is to create a modular, DIY-friendly building kit that allows people to construct…