Tag: design
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207: Design Basics Woman-Centric Home Design
Design Basics have done their homework on what women want. Women-Centric Home Design is based on extensive research including questioning and also observing families in their homes.
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201: Becoming a Passive House Designer
How and why would a successful Building Surveyor, retrain to become a Certified Passive House Designer? Building surveying is interesting work. Building Surveyors are not the people who stand out in fields with theodolites. They’re the people who are trained to diagnose problems with existing buildings. I did it for a while myself and learnt…
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12 Steps to Planning a Dream Bathroom
When you’ve designed more than 200 bathrooms, you know a thing or two about the ins and outs of layout, fittings and features. Interior designer Sam Elliot works at Box Living, a combined design, architecture, and construction company, and is adept at fitting oodles of convenience into a compact floor plan. Sam teams practical thinking…
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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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121: The Sociable Kitchen
Ever noticed how people always seem to ‘turn up’ in the kitchen? Chris Larson definitely noticed this and has developed the concept of the sociable kitchen as a principle of his house design philosophy. He’s also in to making passive solar homes beautiful, which I love. Check out Chris Larson Architecture. Thanks to Pro…
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109: How to have fun while creating a spectacular home
Marnie Oursler used to sell houses. Now she designs and builds stunning homes that delight her clients. And in doing so, Marnie has learnt how to run a successful business. Marnie knows how to have fun while creating a spectacular home. It starts with an attitude of believing in what she’s doing, having a passion for it, and thinking up…
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108: How to make a sustainable house
How do you make a house sustainable? Talking to the team at Sustainability House would be a good start. Sustainability House believe that all buildings should aim to have low embodied energy, use energy efficiently, generate electricity, collect and recycle water, be passively thermally comfortable and provide safe indoor air quality. Sounds reasonable. But how…
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Earth Building
When she was 16, Verena Maeder came to New Zealand from Switzerland for a working holiday and fell in love, but not with a kiwi. Verena fell in love with earth buildings. So much so, that she returned to Switzerland and started training as an architect with the specific goal of learning how to design…
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Good Homes
We pretty much know what’s in them, but where are all the good homes in New Zealand? And what is it specifically that makes them good? A common response from a survey I posted recently, was that people want to know about other people who have designed and built ‘good homes‘, and how they did…
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Improving Home Performance with Curtains
How important are curtains when it comes to improving the performance of your home? Curtains and Curtain Tracks As Chad Keven from Heavy Duty Curtains explains, it’s not just about the drapes, the curtain track that supports the curtain can also play a big role in improving the insulation properties. The alternative to a track…