Innehållsförteckning för #80 July-August 2021 från Green Magazine

The defining success of the Killora Bay house is its multifaceted connection with the Tasmanian bush surrounding it. In 2014, architect and owner Lara Maeseele and husband Tim Watson fell in love with the sense of privacy and seclusion afforded by the dense bush and quickly purchased the site, on the north-western tip of Tasmania’s Bruny Island. For Lara, who was born and raised in Belgium (a country one-third the size of Tasmania, but with a population of over 11 million) the untouched coastal site felt immensely “rare and wild”. This sentiment was shared by the previous owners, who entered into a perpetual Part 5 Agreement with the local council to establish the site as a conservation zone – to protect endemic species of flora and fauna for future generations.…

Architect REFRESH*DESIGN refreshdesign.com.au Builder Bespoke Constructions Passive energy design The design uses passive solar design principles to achieve year-round thermal comfort with little active heating or cooling. Rooms and openings exclude summer heat, while inviting in winter warmth and natural light. Windows, louvres, doors and shutters enable the occupants to harness cross ventilation in multiple directions to mediate the environment in accordance with prevailing conditions. The butterfly roof with all-round glazing provides ample natural light across the day, and throughout the year. The most significant sustainability factor is the compact footprint – just 119-square-metres of internal area – which minimises total embodied energy used in construction, and contributes to lower energy costs over time. While air conditioning is provided in the bedrooms, it’s used only at night during the hottest…

When you’ve farmed a swathe of land for generations, you know its nature. The name of this place, backed by mountains and overlooking the coast, is Ao Marama. It means ‘to stand strong’. That’s not bad advice when you’re building a retreat on a hilltop where the wind funnels persistently down off the ranges to buffet man and beast. It’s not only the view to Tuhua Island that could blow you away. Architect Claire Natusch grew up not too far from this property which lies between the North Island mural town of Katikati and Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty region. She is now a director at the practice Common Space Architects but was employed at Mitchell Stout Dodd when the owners, who have a partnership in a dairy farm,…

There’s nothing quite like eating food you’ve grown yourself. And while not everyone can access land, community gardens can bridge the gap. In public housing, they can play an even more important role. Last year, the ‘hard lockdown’ of Melbourne’s public housing towers brought long-term issues, like overcrowding and insecure employment, into the spotlight. Home to some of the city’s most vulnerable communities, many public housing estates have little to no outdoor space. According to Rob Rees, CEO of urban gardening non-profit Cultivating Community, many of the towers don’t have balconies; some units don’t even have a window ledge with enough light for a pot plant. Community gardens give residents of public housing access to their own growing space. Cultivating Community has been connecting residents with gardens for 23 years,…

Mod The “Desert Chair” has a modernist look with a futuristic edge. The former is expressed through graceful lines and the latter in its materials – its woven textile seat is made from no fewer than 53 plastic bottles. ingoodcompany.com.au Heart We love the work of second-generation cabinet maker, Martin Johnston not just for its beauty, but for its meaning. Handmade in his Billinudgel workshop on Bundjalung Country, NSW, Martin uses local and sustainably-sourced materials. The “Custom Drawers” are part of the collection and were notably included in a raffle to raise funds for Motor Neurone Disease. martinjohnston.com.au Lost and Found Recycling is always on the mind of Melbourne-based ceramicist, Kristin Burgham. “My work is based on discovering discarded objects that I use to create a mould. When my…

Architect Lara Maeseele in association with Tanner Architects stuarttannerarchitects.com.au Builder Tim Watson and Driftwood Workshop Structural engineer Tim Watson Sustainability in design The house siting and form is heavily conditioned by its delicate environmental setting. Fitting within a small footprint of 130-square-metres, the house is designed to accommodate multiple families at once, in separately serviced wings, and in various modes of occupation within individual rooms. Concealed cavity sliders enable spaces to be closed off into more quiet and warm zones when required, creating flexibility in use and allowing modes of seasonal occupation within the broader site. Each building element has been made to work hard to optimise the use of space, concealing joinery elements within the depth of the walls. Passive energy design The house is mostly oriented to the…

Nice and fluid: what started as a clear-minded and driven young practice, Bush Projects has taken cues from its namesake and adapted and evolved the business to include work past the front (or back) fence and out into the world. Working alongside our best architects, Bush Projects is well-known for wild private gardens. Focusing on dynamic materials that nurture little ecosystems, their designs are always site-specific and aim to foster and support wildlife and plants that are native to the surroundings. There are always lots of bees and birds and insects visiting or living in-between their carefully-placed local rocks and waving grasses. Although their gardens could seem a tiny bit haphazard – the truth is far from that. The practice owes their success to thorough research; truly considered design incorporating…

Architect MRTN Architects mrtn.com.au Builder Kane Worthy Constructions Joinery Woodbeast Passive energy design The curved upper volume is oriented for views and solar access to the north and east and turns its back to the strong south-westerly winter winds. It provides solar shading to the lower perpendicular volume which is bunkered into the sand dune on which it sits, creating outdoor spaces protected from the elements. The house has a small footprint, is highly insulated and constructed using predominantly lightweight timber framing, the result of a steep sandy site and preference for using local and familiar construction techniques. Materials The internal and external material palette chosen is deliberately restrained, reducing material wastage and visual clutter. The exterior is singularly clad in radially-sawn silvertop ash with a Cutek low-VOC clear finish…

A sustainable house with a strong aesthetic and relaxed atmosphere. These are often disparate ideas that Justin Buckwell, Design Director of Buckwell + Partners, has achieved in this house in Pearl Beach on the NSW Central Coast. Justin designed the passive solar elements to be features of the building, while drawing inspiration from Japanese architecture to immerse the house in the site. The owners, Nathan and Angella, were living in Hong Kong when they engaged their long-time friend Justin to design a holiday house that would also be suitable as a family home when they returned to Australia in the future. That relocation happened earlier than anticipated due to the pandemic, and Nathan, Angella and their daughter have since made the house, and Pearl Beach, their home. Pearl Beach is…

The Sunshine Coast hinterland is a diverse environment of waterfalls, lush rainforest, undulating back country hills amongst ancient volcanic peaks and the world’s largest crocodile-free everglades. Escape the busy beach communities and wander along mountain paths, reflecting how this land provided so much in both cultural significance plus an abundance of food to the Kabi Kabi people for tens of thousands of years. Within a generation of arriving, the European settlers had dramatically altered the landscape in their quest for timber. Their legacy is a region of rich farmland and many old timber towns scattered throughout the valleys and ridges. Staying at Mayan Farm, a rammed-earth villa on a 100-acre working farm inland from Kin Kin, we were treated to ochre sunsets above emerald rolling hills. Dawns were misty in…

Mooloomba House • 1995-1999 Stradbroke Island (Minjerribah), Queensland Architect: Brit Andresen and Peter O’Gorman I initially encountered the Mooloomba House on a drawing board at university in the late-1990s. Someone was illustrating an exquisitely detailed floor plan by hand on a large sheet of tracing paper. Every branch and canopy of each tree was beautifully captured, the house barely legible amongst the lush landscape. I later learned that this was the island retreat of prominent academics and architects Brit Andresen and Peter O’Gorman. The Mooloomba House is located on Minjerribah (known as ‘Straddie’ locally), a large sand island an hour by ferry from Brisbane on Quandamooka Country. The home’s long, tall timber structure is organised along the western edge of its site, thereby framing a central bush garden – the…