The Sustainable Design of Residential Architecture to Create the Beautiful Environment

Bendalong House

Architect: Madeleine Blanchfield Architects 

Photography by Robert Walsh

The pavilion is the centre of activity of this modest beach house on the south coast of NSW, opening up to the street in a generous way and encouraging social interaction.  It rises just above the street on a plinth, but still offers a sense of retreat. Thoughtful detailing has created a four bedroom family home for the architect’s parents that fits its environment. So much so, the architect noted, that ‘kangaroos come and poo on the concrete at night and they eat my mum’s plants’!

One Wingadal Place

Architect: Collins and Turner with Temple and Stockwell

Photography by Rory Gardiner

This unique architectural collaboration has delivered a unified, creative outcome, imaginatively resolving a complex brief with an extremely difficult site in Point Piper. Maximising the occupants’ views and privacy, the six-bedroom house nevertheless carefully preserves the neighbours’ views and resolves the steep transition to the water, gradually opening up and rotating from the discrete entry to the two-directional harbour view. 

Copper is celebrated throughout as a unifying material, from the richly decorative copper ceiling that defines the main living pavilion to slim facade elements and a crafted structural copper stair.

The Seed House

Architect: fitzpatrick+partners 

Photography by James Fitzpatrick

This laboratory for sustainable systems and prefabricated mass timber construction, thoroughly researched and carefully detailed, has produced a model for a ‘100-year’ house. Innovative mass timber construction using high performance structural insulated panels joins a range of active environmental systems to create long-term sustainability, while the house’s lavish, four-bedroom floor plan is designed to be modified over time as separable dwellings for the architect’s family. Purpose-designed fittings and hardware explore local manufacturing capability. 

The cascading interiors showcase the quality of the timber and maximise the drama of the spectacular bushland site on Sydney’s Middle Harbour.

Tree House

Architect: Matt Elkan Architect 

Photography by Clinton Weaver

Tree house tackles an emerging crisis many bushy suburban sites face: building in fire zones. 'The four-bedroom family house in Bayview on Sydney's Northern Beaches is a fine case study in how to resolve the sometimes inhibiting constraints of building in these challenging site conditions. Bushfire shutters are carefully detailed to be hidden, maintaining views and connections to the landscape that that are what have drawn people to occupy the bush. The resilient and tough weathering steel cladding of the outside is wonderfully counterbalanced by the soft light timbers of the inside. 

Upside Down Akubra House

Architect: Alexander Symes Architect 

Photography by Barton Taylor

Upside Down Akubra is a minimalist off-grid three-bedroom farmhouse that sits elegantly within its rural landscape near Nundle. An expansive steel framed roof projects beyond the home’s concrete walls, subtly framing views and providing shelter from the harsh climate. The building’s simplicity in construction belies an intelligent array of elements that renders it a self-sufficient habitation. PV cells extend beyond the roof to form an external shade structure, concrete formwork is reused in an inventive manner, and a single oversized gutter channels rainwater to an underground tank for reuse, its journey celebrated via a waterfall feature.

Wallis Lake House

Architect: Matthew Woodward Architecture 

Photography by Brett Boardman

This low-maintenance three-bedroom weekender on the NSW Central Coast designed for a client in the building industry captures beautiful lake views and invites a visitor to walk through its series of well- proportioned spaces. Living areas in the off-form concrete pavilion and recycled blackbutt timber-clad private wing offer flexible rooms in a building that is immaculately detailed and executed.

A 40,000L rainwater tank services all indoor taps and toilets, while laundry grey water is recycled for garden irrigation. Its high thermal mass and a green roof over the living space help regulate room temperature and louvred windows encourage natural cross-ventilation.