This angular passive house is built on a tilt in New Zealand and leans into the wind!

Posted on 31/10/2021 by Chi Thukral

This modern house in New Zealand is a passive structure that won an award from the New Zealand Institute of Architects for its sense of fun and how the design carries through from outside to inside – it makes you feel like you are on a holiday but in a home that you can stay in all year round. The Long Grass House harmoniously blends affordability, sustainability, and liveability!

The use of inexpensive plywood in the interior and steel cladding on the exterior gives it an evergreen yet modern aesthetic with contrast. The interiors are engaging, with plenty of space, natural light, and material warmth. The design approach has been focused on including what is really needed in order to produce what is sufficient; positively reducing waste of both space and construction materials.

It showcases a simple plan for a medium-sized house with a spacious te garage and an interesting layout of the bathroom, laundry, and entrance. The garage and main structure complement each other and almost look like two perfectly angled Lego blocks! The jury that presented the award noted how the Long Grass House is a great example 0f how to use inexpensive materials and get real value out of them.

The angled ends are supposed to appear to be leaning into the prevailing wind, but it’s really a clever energy-saving trick to create overhangs that shade the windows from the northern sun. The architect notes: “The form of the building is compact giving a low form factor, and with its compactness comes low energy demand. Passive House Energy calculations were used to drive design decisions – using current climate data and predicted future climate data.”

A panoramic skylight runs near the length of the building and connects to a vertical window and you can see it from the inside in the kitchen. This light is minimal but eye-catching detail in the house which is designed with thrifty detailing, colourful trimmings, and simple geometric shapes. The wooden stairway leads to a loft above the bathroom and laundry.

“Every material and surface here is durable and will take some hard knocks—something that was central to all material decisions, including cladding. We wanted to ensure that every product we specified would stand the test of time in this harsh environment and be suitable for the family to live in with its changing needs for years to come,” said the team.

The house gets a lot of attention for the slopes that lean into the wind, but the real appreciation should go towards the simplicity and economy of the materials used throughout. Steel siding is one of the most durable and affordable materials for the exterior. While plywood is perfect for long-lasting interiors without increasing costs and maintaining a timeless look. The compact structure helps ensure low energy demand and Passive House Energy calculations were used to drive many design decisions using current and future (predicted) climate data. Long Grass House is perfect for a modern, eco-conscious family looking for a forever home on a budget!

Designer: Rafe Maclean

This passive house features a living green roof that merges the home with its forested surroundings!

Posted on 21/09/2021 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Hill House is a passive house designed and constructed by Snegiri Architects with a living green roof that blends the home seamlessly with its natural woodland surroundings.

Passive houses and green homes are rising in popularity, cropping up across the globe, and slowly, but steadily establishing a new standard for residence architecture. Photovoltaic panels, living roofs, and rainwater collection systems are some of the most common sustainable and energy-efficient elements that grace the outside and inside of such homes. Snegiri Architects, a firm based in Saint Petersburg, Russia, finished work on a passive residence called Hill House, complete with a living green roof that merges the home with the nearby forest.

Building new homes, especially passive houses, in dense woodlands without felling trees is a near-impossible task unless you incorporate them into the home’s layout. Managing to preserve the forested lot’s preexisting trees, Snegiri Architects built Hill House to be entirely integrated into the surrounding environment. Plotted with diverse plant life and shrubbery, Hill House’s living green roof sprawls with a grass carpet filled with stonecrop and dwarf plants including chamomile and sedum.

The gradual incline of Hill House’s green roof conceals the home’s structural presence, bringing the home inch by inch into the bordering woods. The rest of Hill House’s exterior strikes a balance between black-stained wood-paneled facades and natural, unstained wood-paneled eaves. With this contrast, the home blends naturally into its surroundings, but its interiors remain bright with light window accents.

From top to bottom, the Hill House undoubtedly reaches the energy efficiency standard set by passive house building techniques. The terrace and most of the rooms are oriented towards the home’s sunny side to collect the maximum amount of sunlight during the day and energy-saving windows prevent the heated or cooled air from leaving the home. The home is also ventilated with air recovery, and Swedish slab, monolith, mineral wool, and linseed oil-soaked larch all provide the home with insulation from its foundation to its roof.

Designer: Snegiri Architects

This house made of wood, straw, and cork is a great example of modern, sustainable architectural design!

Posted on 14/03/2021 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Somewhere on the outskirts of a small village in Italy, a couple of computer scientists call a simple farmhouse, built from wood, straw, and cork, home. Before either of us get any ideas, this isn’t a modern take on “The Three Little Pigs.” LCA Architetti, an architecture firm based in Milan, has finished work on The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork– a farmhouse-style home fittingly named for being primarily constructed from wood, straw, and cork.

The two-story farmhouse has a prefabricated timber structure that reflects the style of neighboring farmhouses and barns located in the immediate area. Blending with the surrounding countryside, The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork dons a grainy exterior with cladding formed from cork, a type of insulating material harvested from the bark of cork oak trees. The home is further insulated through the use of straw, which is traditionally used as an insulator for other rural dwellings like barns and henhouses. The straw insulation consists of repurposed discarded rice plants handed over by nearby farmers in the area.

Sustainability was a top priority in constructing The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork, and the house’s commitment to energy-efficiency is exhibited through the recycled material used for insulation, as well as the cluster of solar panels found on the home’s roof. Coupling the use of recycled straw and cork for insulation with photovoltaics for solar energy, The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork stands as a self-powered home, decreasing the overall consumption of energy and emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2.

The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork was built for a young couple of computer scientists who longed to work closer to nature and live a more sustainable lifestyle. To find harmony with the natural surroundings of Magnago, Italy, The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork is a sustainable house characterized by simple architecture. Everything from the materials used for construction to the chosen methods of insulation is dedicated to preserving the home’s natural surroundings.

Designer: LCA Architetti

The combination of straw insulation and cork cladding works to keep The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork both warm and eco-friendly.

Cork is a naturally durable, recyclable, and insulation construction material.

On one side of The House of Wood, Straw, and Cork a large, glass-paned window merge into the roof to provide additional skylight inside.

The two-story home features a living room at its center with high ceilings and an unobstructed view of the surrounding countryside.

Inside, a calming mix of natural smoothed over wood and cooled down stone walls enhance the home’s simple design.

Chromatic shading flows throughout the house, allowing for sharp angles to bring out the darker and brighter shades from the natural wood accents.

This award-winning tiny home uses Passive House construction methods to stay toasty warm in winter!

Posted on 01/12/2020 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

The design concept behind Kirimoko can be traced back to a bike trip, taken by the tiny house’s clients, Will and Jen, which required both of them to live completely out of pannier bags. Kirimoko, designed by Condon Scott Architects is a tiny home located in Wanaka, NZ, which has received several awards, including the New Zealand Institute of Architects 2019 Southern Architecture Award and a bronze award at the 2019 Designers Institute of New Zealand Best Awards, for the measures taken in the home’s Passive House approach during construction.

Condon Scott Architects utilized Passive House construction to bring Kirimoko to life. Passive House is a fundamental concept that provides indoor, thermal comfort by using energy sources of heat from inside the building. This construction concept requires solid, high-level insulation, and airtight design. Describing the details of the home’s build, Condon Scott says, “With a combination of Passive House measures and structural insulated panels, virtually no additional energy is required to maintain a consistent level of thermal comfort against the backdrop of the unforgiving Central Otago climate.” The builders installed structural insulated panels for the roof and walls of Kirimoko. SIPs are ideal for prefabricated structures because they maintain a solid foam center and are exceptionally airtight, requiring no thermal bridging, which is a form of heat transfer and a major source of energy loss.

The structure’s external cladding is showcased with a combination of larch weatherboards and asphalt shingles, providing a very subdued, and coy energy for the outside of the home. The seclusion of Kirimoko was achieved by keeping three-quarters of the building’s whole exterior closed, but entirely opening up one of the four facades to a floor-to-ceiling, glazed window. The window of the home’s north panel offers a full view of Kirimoko’s insides and was chosen specifically because, in the Southern hemisphere, sunlight comes from the north, so during the winter months, ample sunlight can be gained for indoor heat, but during the summer months, Kirimoko’s deep eaves help mitigate overheating. Additionally, inside Kirimoko, every corner and piece of furniture offers expansive pockets of storage so that despite the compact size and Passive House measurements, this home still buzzes with energy.

Designer: Condon Scott Architects

The decision to migrate to a 30-square-meter plot of land in Wanaka, New Zealand’s gateway to the Southern Alps, dawned on the couple after living happily for months on a cycling tour on just the bare essentials contained in their panniers.

However, even with both the small amount of land occupied by Kirimoko and the structure’s no-frills attitude, this little home still “packs a punch,” as Condon Scott puts it, and makes smart use of every nook and cranny.

While the decision to live with less stuff could certainly lend itself to a sustainable sort of lifestyle, the couple let their own experience on the road and their intuition guide the design process. According to the couple, living with less is not so much a frugal statement, as it is a natural tendency and this sentiment shines through the home’s construction process.