Sanctuary Issue 46

Issue highlights

  • The Retrofit Issue: Renovate on any budget
  • Scavenger studio, made from salvaged, found and free-cycled materials
  • From fibro to fabulous
  • Eighties brick revival
  • Natural light-filled period weatherboards
  • Food foraging: Your right to roam
  • Adaptable design and why you’ll keep hearing about it
  • Deconstruction: Inside the war on construction waste
  • Shared yards + more

House profiles

Eighties revival
A standard single-storey brick house in Brisbane sets a precedent for the way we renovate in sub-tropical climates.

Work the room
Sometimes redesigning and rebuilding one room is enough to improve the whole house, and it’s cost-effective too!

Natural lightbox
Ingenious sustainable design plumbs natural light into the heart of an ageing terrace.

Material difference
Sourcing sustainable materials can be a major challenge, even for ‘deep green’ homeowners like Danny Mathews.

From fibro to fabulous
Is Australia’s ubiquitous fibro shack worth keeping? We meet two families on opposite sides of the country who say ‘yes’.

Cottage cathedralette
A flexible new house design preserves a horticulturalist’s beloved inner-urban food garden.

Free-cycled style
Built to tread lightly on the land, the ‘Scavenger Studio’ in America’s Pacific Northwest makes elegant use of salvaged materials.

Design features

Renovate on any budget
Experienced designer Simone Schenkel shares her tips for sustainable renovations with a starting budget of $10,000 through to $350,000-plus.

Case study: upgrade from 1 to 7 Stars
Danie King and her partner were keen to find a way to measure the impact of their major renovation.

Adaptable design
Houses should be designed to match the way we live, which in the 21st century means being adaptable for ageing, climate, working from home and variable household sizes, writes Kirsty Volz.

Deconstruction: What’s old is new again
Deconstructing buildings to salvage materials is less common than demolition for landfill – but could this be about to change?

Lessons learnt
Five years on, we revisit a Gold Coast house designed to accommodate multiple families to see how their co-housing experiment has evolved.

Shared yards
Tearing down the backyard fence or installing a gate between your house and next door sounds good in theory, but what’s it like in reality?

Foraging: Your right to roam
Foraging-friendly landscapes can be found just about anywhere, including in the city. You just need to know where to look, writes Kirsten Bradley of Milkwood.

Design workshop: A better beach shack
Uta Green of Green Design Architects in Tasmania offers suggestions for how a 1950s beachside shack can be renovated for better thermal efficiency, including options for a low-budget retrofit or a modest extension.