Sustainable House Design

Passiv Laneway

This compact granny flat sits atop an elegant garage on a discreet laneway on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. It is now Sydney’s third certified passivhaus.

Thornleigh Passivhaus

Sydney’s first certified Passive House.

This compact two-storey home replaces a defunct cottage. Nestled in between a busy road, a magnificent tallowwood and a train line the home will offer a haven of peace and quiet.

Kangaroo Island CLT House

This Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) house has been a collaborative effort of many parties; Prodesi Architects in the Czech republic, CLT panels from Austria, Envirotecture in Sydney and Yard Brothers construction on Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

Better not bigger #1

This is a great example of how a home can be dramatically improved with making it any bigger.

Collaroy Cottage

This 1920s vintage beach cottage was sitting a little precariously on an unstable slope on the coastal escarpment, and was in need of saving before a landslip took it away.

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Ecovillage #1

The first home to be completed at the Narara Ecovillage epitomises the values on which the village is founded. It is a compact, highly efficient, healthy home perfectly tailored to its site and occupants.

Asquith Passivhaus

This near-complete family home is a pure expression of high-performance design. A street-to-north orientation will see the front yard dominated by food producing raised garden beds in front of an optimised façade that captures just enough solar heat for winter warmth.

Hillside Hideaway

Near lake Macquarie, on small acreage in a peri-urban semi-forested hillside, this comfortable family home sits across the contours so it is all on one level, with unimpeded winter solar access. Summer heat is shaded out, with a unique feature being the large sliding awnings over the north facing patio, which also house the photovoltaic panels.

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Mackerel Beach House

Located at Pittwater’s remote Great Mackerel Beach, nestled against Kuringai Chase National Park where the beach meets the bush, was tired and downright ugly, and too small to cope with multiple families holidaying together.

Mudgee Hempcrete House 2

The long plan of the home provides maximum northern solar exposure to warm the home during the cold winters. Generous overhangs provide the shading you need in an area that often reaches high 40°C. A retractable awning over the northern deck gives the flexibility to provide sun or shade as desired during the shoulder seasons.

Russell Vale Reno

This simple cottage had good bones and due to the owners’ desire to maintain a simple lifestyle utilising multifunctional spaces and reuse existing parts of the house, it was decided to renovate and reinvent the existing cottage.

This charming home has come a long way from its original state.

The Paling House

How do you extend a small and humble fibro into a functional, comfortable home of the 21st century, without joining in the ‘look how grand I am!’ KDR stakes? In fact, what if you love its humble ‘houso’ roots, and want to keep that part of the suburb’s cultural heritage?

Tree House

The owners of this award winning house wanted a sustainable home that would cater for their growing family and a separate granny flat for overseas visitors… all with a tree house feel. Lots of established trees, and steep land sloping away from the road contributed to the challenge of providing universal access to the main living area of the house.

Yarrabee

This homestead in the hinterland of NSW Central Coast, looks a lot bigger than its 380m2, thanks to the separate pavilions with connecting roofs, and generous covered outdoor areas. Additional to the family home is guest accommodation, and a corporate headquarters for the farm and the owner’s broader business interests – all expressed in a very detailed design brief.

Neutral Bay House

Many sites have limited solar access, and are often written off as unsuitable for a low-energy high-comfort house. This should not be. This site in Neutral Bay, like many urban sites, had significant shading to the north, but we took advantage of one ‘window’ of north sun at ground level, and then ‘borrowed’ the rest from solar collectors on the roof.

102 Australia

This slow burn renovation is part of an incremental path towards an intended EnerPHit certified Passive House renovation.  The original home is a typical Inner West Sydney single storey terrace with the usual mix of tack-ons out the back and tight internal spaces.

Narara Hempcrete House

This Hempcrete house incorporates a multitude of design features ensuring that not only does the building meet all of the Ecovillage’s rigorous sustainability goals and guidelines, but also creates a very comfortable and liveable home for its owner.

Fairlight Residence

We maximised passive solar design in this house and brought in natural light especially to existing part of the house. The home is energy efficient in appliances and fittings and heats and cools itself passively. A solar hot water system, boosts the efficiency of the existing instantaneous system. Most of the water comes from a 10,000L rainwater tank.

North Manly

These two houses were designed and built in the evolving contemporary style of the beach cottages once common on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. The site is on the banks of Manly Lagoon, and being a flood basin, minimum floor levels mean that the building is elevated. The site orientation is ‘mixed’ – meaning neither axis faces true north.

Bathurst

Envirotecture produced the winning entry in an invited competition for a demonstration house to be built by Bathurst Regional Council. This will be a showcase for the local community, to influence residents to make more sustainable choices when purchasing new homes. Given the stresses placed on our environment by urban growth, it is critical that such practical leadership is shown.

Rainforest House

The site is on a heavily forested north-west facing slope with views towards Red Bluff and the Kuranda Railway to the west. The site is fairly steep, with a narrow spur line at the rear which plunges steeply into a seasonal creek gully below.

Featured in Sanctuary

Elanora Heights

Our clients wanted a home for an expanding family, and a home office, with hi-tech sustainable features to reduce their family’s ecological impact. Working with the site and the original dwelling, the additions and alterations saw a small, hot weatherboard cottage transformed into a comfortable sustainable home and office.

Copacabana

Envirotecture regularly collaborates with different kinds of builders to achieve good results on restricted budgets. This house at Copacabana on the NSW Central Coast is one such project, where conventional construction methods exceeded the client’s budget, and an innovative method provided by a specialist builder solved the problem.

Avalon Pavilion House

The design brief was a long time brewing, with several different concepts developed and discarded along the way. The clients, who are passionate about sustainability, did not want to just make the house bigger, they wanted to make it better! …although it was a very small house to start with.

North Narrabeen House

The brief called for a simple house that maximised the open, sun-drenched outlook toward the ocean. A space that called for comfort and functionality as key ingredients, along with an elegant, light and airy feel. Sustainability weighed in as high priority, giving the perfect base with which to design this home.

McMahons Point

A 70s vintage apartment which had been bequeathed to the Australian Conservation Foundation had some serious problems. The ACF is Australia’s peak environmental body, and saw both the need to lead by example, and the opportunity to set new standards. Envirotecture was approached to design the renovation using best available sustainable principles, methods, and materials.

Roof Design

This design exercise was commissioned by a major roof tile manufacturer to explore some new possibilities for the use of their new range of shallow-pitch roof tiles. The twisted plane roof concept was developed in conjunction with workshop testing of the construction tolerances of the tiles, to ensure mounting and weatherproofing were not compromised.

Balgowlah House

This small renovation of a 1920s brick semi in Balgowlah was not without its challenges. The site is set on a busy road with car noise from the front and attached neighbours to the north severely limited solar access opportunities. However, well thought out design solutions helped overcome these challenges and gave the owners the quiet sun-filled haven and connection to their much-loved garden that they were seeking

Triplets House

The Read Triplets were born with muscular dystrophy and are wheelchair bound. Envirotecture are very proud to be involved in the effort to design and build a home to cater to the needs of the Read family, now and into the future.