Category: Design
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157: Sustainable Landscapes with Hitesh Mehta
Hitesh Mehta I originally contacted Hitesh Mehta to talk about sustainable landscape architecture, but he offers a lot more than that. Hitesh has travelled the world advising and helping designers of ecolodges. He enjoys all aspects of architecture as well as photography, environmental planning and writing. To find out more about his recent work, visit…
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156: Why Passive House? With Dr Wolfgang Feist
I never intended for this to become a Passive House blog site, nor did I intend to become a Passive House expert. And I don’t think either of those two things have happened, yet. I have had a number of Passive House designers and product suppliers on the show and earlier this year I was…
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154: Adaptive Architecture
For Matthew Baran of Baran Studio Architecture, California, Adaptive architecture means much more than just designing for the local climate. We create cities in places where maybe they’re not supposed to be. This, combined with continued pressure on natural resources and climate change creates a need for adaptive architecture. Matthew Baran Matthew was drawn to architecture…
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153: Simple is the New Smart Home
What makes a ‘smart home’? Paul Dowsett and his team at Sustainable.To are dedicate to creating affordable, healthy and energy efficient homes, because that’s what Paul believes is ‘the right thing to do’. I think that a pretty good definition for a ‘smart home’. And the best way to achieve it? Keep it simple. Simple…
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151: Passive House is Here
There’s so much that could be said about two days of great Passive House presentations in Melbourne, but I’ve challenged myself to boil it down to one point per presentation. If there was one takeaway from the second South Pacific Passive House Conference, it was that Passive House has arrived in the Southern Hemisphere…
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150: Energy Efficient Homes in Canterbury
Glenn Harley is a builder of energy efficient homes in Canterbury. After being attracted to the natural, healthy feel of strawbale construction, Glenn now produces high performance homes with lots of insulation and airtight envelopes. Among his recent achievements is building Christchurch’s first Passive House. The Cost of Building Glenn points to the cost of…
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144: A System for High Performance Homes
Beattie Passive is a complete system for high performance homes. I love the concept of ‘a house as a system’. I also love the idea of making it simple and easy to get right, and that’s exactly what Ron Beattie has done. As explained in their technical information, “The Beattie Passive system achieves superior levels of…
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139: The Future of Green Design
The terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘eco’ are not obvious on Adam Taylor’s website. They are there (see if you can find them). But perhaps the future of green design is embedded in good design. Not something separate. Homestar Practitioner Among other things, Adam is a Homestar Practitioner. There’s nothing particularly special about this nowadays, except when you…
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136: Thermal Mass Is Not That Useful
I recall visiting one of the fist 8 Homestar homes in Christchurch and being surprised that this new show home had a suspended timber floor. The double layer of insulation gave the floor a very impressive R-value, far better than any concrete floor slab I’d seen recently. All well-and-good, I thought. But thermally, surely it couldn’t be…
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135 How to Create A Life More Sustainable
Sydney based firm, PIDCOCK – Architecture and Sustainability is focused on desirable, sustainable architecture. I love the tagline displayed proudly on their site – ‘a life more sustainable’. Caroline Pidcock Director, Caroline Pidcock was heading for a career as an engineer but says she fell in love with architecture, almost by accident and has loved the…