Green magazine offers a fresh and not overly earnest take on sustainability, architecture and landscape design. It gets you thinking about the best ways to reduce your impact, and introduces ingenious ideas you may not have thought about. And it does it in an appealing format that’s stylish as well as accessible. Definitely a favourite on our reading list.
Do you really want to live like this?
When designing a new home or renovating an existing one, it’s essential to consider the amount of space you need to ensure your quality of life. The vast majority of Australians enjoy a luxury of space that is the envy of the rest of the world. Yet despite this, or perhaps because they may not realise just how precious it is, many Australian homeowners could consider the space they create more carefully.
By building ill-designed extensions that are uncomfortable to live in, space can be squandered. And when building from scratch, is it really necessary to construct the largest home possible on your land? Both situations can create homes that are wasteful, with vast areas of ‘living’ area lying dead and unused. Houses such as these are expensive to manage and are lost opportunities in terms of enhancing quality of life.
The other equally important factor is that no amount of water recycling, solar heating and use of recycled building materials can eliminate the fact that building larger homes or extensions is more taxing on the environment than smaller ones. Building bigger homes inevitably means more raw construction materials, more waste, more electricity, more gas, more water, more cleaning supplies and more maintenance.
While many people think about turning off lights, adding insulation and choosing eco-friendly building products, it seems rare for people to simply consider the wasteful space in their homes and its consequences.
Some of the most innovative and satisfying solutions are found when space in limited. Rather than supersizing your space, why not choose higher quality fixtures and fittings, better quality window frames and glazing and adding features such as skylights. The approach is win-win. You save by not creating energy consuming wasted space and then have the opportunity to invest in higher quality and environmentally-friendly products.
With population numbers heading ever northwards, space is indeed a luxury and is set to become even more so. But building big just because you can doesn’t necessarily deliver a better, more livable result. Whatever the size of your space or the one you want to create, careful consideration and applying clever design solutions win out every time.
Robert Harwood RAIA RIBA
Architects know that getting the lighting right is crucial. Le Corbusier went so far as to say that “Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.”
The right use of light enhances and improves a space and can transform the spatial context, making it more appealing, more comfortable, often enlarging it or highlighting its enticing aspects. Light, or its absence, can transform a space across seasons, days, hours and moments.
Installing a quality skylight into your home is a great way to enjoy these benefits, often with dramatic results. Not only does it allow greater light and warmth into your home. When properly designed, an energy-efficient skylight can reduce the need for artificial lighting and heating during daylight hours, helping to minimize your heating, cooling, and lighting costs.
A skylight’s position should be considered carefully to maximise infusion of daylight and passive solar heating. Skylights on south facing roofs (in the southern hemisphere) provide fairly constant but cool illumination. Those on east-facing roofs provide maximum light and heat gain in the morning, whereas those facing west provide afternoon sunlight and heat gain. North-facing skylights offer the greatest potential for winter passive solar heat gain, but often allow unwanted heat gain in the summer. You can prevent this by installing the skylight in the shade of deciduous trees or adding a movable window covering.
Robert Harwood
Director | My Architect
The brief:
The owners of this Edwardian house wanted a rear extension home with clean, contemporary styling that gave them more living space, greater flow through and more natural light.
Like to talk to us about your project? Visit the My Architect website, call 130 321 119 or email us.