Urban Green Home Build is a project that sits within a community of homes with a mandate to be light-filled, comfortable and with a small carbon footprint. This home, situated at the rear of the overall property sought to meet this communal brief, and contracted Sustainable Building & Design to create a home that would respect its landscape, minimise resource consumption in occupation, use sustainable building materials, offer low maintenance living and consider landscaping and the garden as part of the overall vision.

At the core of this project was the desire to innovate, to showcase a revolution in sustainable building practices, not simply make minor improvements based on an evolution of standard practices.

Where possible, the home was constructed using recycled materials, with structural timber, floorboards and roofing from the original home put to use in the new build. As new materials were required on site, the clients and firm worked in tandem to actively make sustainable choices: locally fabricated timbercrete blocks replaced bricks; envirocrete took the place of traditional concrete; natural and organic oils and finishes were used across timber and concrete where required; high performance, double glazed windows ensured the home could be well lit and passive in its heating and cooling; an 8kw solar system and battery storage work with a smart module and edge inverter to keep the home powered. In an Australian first, all tools on site were powered with an off-grid power system.

Suburban homes should be designed with more intelligent sustainability, and it really shouldn’t cost the earth. Smarter decisions in the design phase can ensure that these homes perform the test of time with sustainable technologies that ensure a warm house in winter and a cooler house in summer, with minimal usage.

Photography by Matthew Mallett (1, 2) and Dylan James (3, 4).