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Category Archives: Housing

Architectural Design Making a Positive Impact on Sustainability in your Liveable City

If you are faced with the question; “Are you part of a liveable city”, would you know how to answer? Many would consider any city that they live in as a liveable city, but what does that really mean? The answer revolves around a few simple words that some of us are well versed with, while others are not. – sustainability, conservation, environmentally friendly, eco-friendly and carbon friendly (to name a few). Creating a more liveable city comes down to several factors, beginning with residential and commercial designs that offer sustainable features. Modern technology is now proving that there are …

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Helpful Tips for Managing Household Waste

The following article was kindly written and contributed by Briana Jones. Waste management and waste reduction are pressing issues around the world. With the global population predicted to balloon to 9.7 billion by 2050, it’s imperative that we find ways to minimise waste and manage it properly. If we don’t, we’ll soon be living in a world with more waste than available resources. Thankfully, there are many ways that individuals and families can contribute to the worthwhile cause of managing and minimising waste. Here are some simple, helpful tips to help manage waste in your Australian home. Avoid Plastics Plastic …

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Practical Ideas For Self-Sustaining Homes

Raising ecological awareness has become imperative in this modern era. It is our responsibility and a great necessity to advocate and apply eco-friendly practices in order to stop climate changes, prevent global warming and eventually protect our precious environment. Thus, it does not surprise that self-sustaining homes have gained so much popularity. The idea has been welcomed by an impressive number of people and we can rightfully expect to build a more sustainable world in the near future. So, what are the best practical ideas for self-sustaining homes? Here is a comprehensive answer. Features of self-sustaining homes Self-sustaining homes have …

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Australian Sustainable Design: the Challenges, What We’re Getting Right, and Where to From Here

The drive behind building more environmentally friendly residential homes is coming from individuals, not government bodies, and cookie-cutter developments are holding us back, according to a think tank assembled to address the issue of implementing sustainable design. The chair of the discussion, organised by LG Electronics, was architect and TV host Peter Maddison, who argued that changing our behaviour was key to these kinds of properties having their maximum benefit. “In my view, sustainability is a lot bigger than just green stuff,” Maddison said. “We can put the best solar panels in the world in our house, and that’s a …

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Living Pods and Naturescapes: Transforming Residential Areas into Sustainable Living Environments

As an Architect, I’m able to see a bird’s eye view of trends in design. A significant movement that continues to expand in our consciousness, is how to create a sustainable world (for ourselves and generations to come) amidst an expanding population and increasing use of natural resources. Now more than ever, we see people responding to this challenge. We are re-discovering our fundamental connection with the earth and with each other and communities are being created around environments where food, nature and aesthetics are re-united. My own work on “Living Pods”, a term I use to relate to home …

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Housing Affordability: A Problem With A Solution?

The unaffordability of housing is an almost universal problem, with planners and politicians alike being accused of killing the Aussie or Kiwi Dream. This is not a new issue —in the 1950s the ‘working man’ faced problems financing their first home. That was addressed by the emergence of the ‘working woman’ and her income and government assistance from soft loans to building subsidies, to smooth the way to home ownership. While government intervention is still possible, present governments are less willing to intervene in those ways and the ‘working family’ has no one left to send out to work. Governments …

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Lego-like buildings to tackle sustainability in the Australian housing market

Castlemaine architect Simon Disler thinks there is a crucial missing step when designing more sustainable houses for the mass housing market: flexibility. “We wanted to come up with a building concept that was really about having a modular floor planning system that means you can shuffle the parts of the building around to adapt to a site to get good performance,” Mr Disler said. That means thinking about lot size and orientation and then adapting a floor plan to the site so that a house faces the sun. He said this step is a cost-effective way to save energy consumption …

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