Ideas & Advice
Beating bushfire: Retrofitting for safer homes in fire-prone areas
Architect and bushfire design expert Nigel Bell outlines what owners of existing houses can do to improve their homes’ chances of surviving a fire.
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Ideas & Advice
In the line of fire: Garden design to reduce the threat of bushfire
Increased risk of bushfire may be the new normal in many parts of Australia. Still, there are plenty of things you can do in your garden to give your house a better chance of survival if a fire does hit.
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Ideas & Advice
Closing the performance gap: Passive House for schools
Australian schools are underperforming in terms of energy efficiency and indoor environment quality. We talk to some architects who believe that the rigorous Passive House standard could help turn that around.
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On the drawing board
On the drawing board: Passive House meets multi-residential
The Fern serviced apartments in Sydney’s Redfern are the first Passive House-certified apartments in the southern hemisphere. Architect Oliver Steele explains why he chose this approach for the project, the challenges they faced and what they learned about the potential of Passive House principles for delivering more sustainable multi-residential buildings.
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Ideas & Advice
Better together: exploring collaborative housing in Australia
From a couple of households to large ecovillages with a raft of shared facilities, collaborative housing projects come in many sizes and types, but they all offer the social, financial and environmental benefits of sharing resources and building community. We look at what’s involved in setting one up, and get advice from people around the country already doing it.
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Ideas & Advice
Ask our experts: Life cycle analysis
The Architects Declare Australia movement, launched last year in response to the growing climate emergency (see Sanctuary 49), now has nearly 900 signatories. One of the commitments is the inclusion of life cycle analysis to measure and reduce the carbon impact of design and construction projects; we asked Clinton Cole of Sydney’s CplusC Architectural Workshop to explain what his practice is doing to contribute to positive change in this area in alignment with their pledge.
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Ideas & Advice
Design workshop: Down by the river
Having lived in their beloved riverside suburb of Melbourne for ten years, Rowan Doyle and Fiona Cock are planning an updated, more flood-resilient home to accommodate changing family needs. They are interested in prefabrication and Passive House; Sven Maxa of Maxa Design is knowledgeable about both, and gives them some pointers.
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Ideas & Advice
Where there’s smoke: Protecting yourself from air pollution at home
Traditional approaches to good indoor air quality centre around materials that don’t off-gas, indoor plants and an abundant supply of fresh external air – but what if it’s not so fresh? Building scientist Jenny Edwards looks at what you can do when the outside air is hazardous, as was the case in many parts of the country this past summer.
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Outdoors
In the line of fire: Plant list
Download a list of popular native species to accompany our Sanctuary 51 article 'In the line of fire: Garden design to reduce the threat of bushfire'.
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Ideas & Advice
Ask our experts: the Living Building Challenge
Fittingly, the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre premises at NSW’s University of Wollongong is the first building in Australia to be certified under the Living Building Challenge (LBC) framework for sustainable, regenerative buildings. We asked the centre’s director, Senior Professor Paul Cooper, what the LBC is all about and how they achieved it.
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Ideas & Advice
Nurturing nature
There’s a lot you can do to promote biodiversity when you’re designing a new home or renovation, with clear benefits for you and your family as well as for the natural environment. Ecologist Sarah Bekessy and her colleagues explain what’s possible.
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