Coconut Crab

Barton Taylor

• Architects

Coconut Crab is an environmentally regenerative ceramic studio which offsets its embodied energy by 149 times over a 50 year assessment. It is designed in collaboration with the client, Casa Adams Fine Wares and landscape architect Jason Monaghan in the backyard of Casa Adam's family home in Inner West Sydney. Casa Adam's aim is to encourage preservation and curiosity of marine life through meticulously painted, hand-made porcelain plates. The biggest example being the giant tiled Coconut Crab climbing the facade. The studio design flexibly caters to ceramic production, educational workshops and business administration. It is located to the rear of the site, across from their existing family home. The dwellings equally share a thriving native landscape which supports vulnerable endemic frog, bird and insect species and an edible garden. The strategic planning and placement was further complemented by the use of recycled materials, recycled double glazed doors and windows, along with a highly insulated and an airtight building envelope and HRV system. This ensures the users have a comfortable and durable working environment which can be easily readapted for future uses such as a secondary dwelling.

photo_credit Barton Taylor — Barton Taylor

Coconut Crab is a studio for Casa Adams Fine Wares in the backyard of their family home in Inner West Sydney. Their aim is to wonder and astound with stories from the seas: from the incredible biodiversity found underwater to the people who made it their life's work to study them. Through their hand-made porcelain plates, which are meticulously painted to reflect real specimens, they ignite curiosity about marine life so it may influence conservation efforts. This is showcased through their hosting of regular educational workshops and open studios, alongside marine biologists, to their large global following. They also donate 5-10% of their profits to environmental organisations.

Already, Casa Adams Fine Wares have hosted workshops and an open studio in Coconut Crab, enabling the public to enter the workspace and network with other like minded community members. A passive connection between the studio and family home is maintained through the garden. It acts as an intermediate shared space which can be utilised by all people living and/or working on the site.

After ASA’s suggestion to create facade tiles from within the studio, Casa Adams quickly settled on a Coconut Crab as it would be a brilliant species for education. It is the largest terrestrial crab, measuring up to 1m wide, can climb trees to reach for food, has high intelligence and can live up to 60 years. Coconut crabs are listed as Vulnerable and whilst they thrive in remote and unpopulated islands across the Indo-Pacific, they are at risk from being overharvested by humans and threatened from climate change. There are regulations to help protect coconut crabs, although the specifics are determined by each country. The best way we can promote this specie is by reducing consumption but also by sharing its wonders so more people are motivated to conserve it.

The site is zoned for multi-residential housing, however, the clients were not eager to capitalise on this, as they wanted to maintain the quaint character of the street and biodiversity on the site providing respite for surrounding dwellings. Positioning the studio to the rear of the site under the large existing tree and orientated towards the garden, reduces overlooking into the studio and rear yard from neighbouring multi-residential buildings and maximises the site permeability and biodiversity regeneration.

The downstairs of the studio has a large central table for creating, painting, glazing ceramics and workshops. A wall of reused ply shelving acts as drying space and a recycled sink bench top makes clean up easier. The upstairs light penetrating aluminium flooring houses space for additional painting, administration, packing and product photography. The work space overlooks the garden with passive surveillance back to the family home, creating distance between work and home and enabling greater public engagement. In future, the high performance space can easily be adapted to house extended family members or be rented out, adding additional housing stock to Inner West Sydney.

Through the design being built using Passive House principles and utilising passive solar design principles, users get to experience a high degree of thermal comfort throughout the year whilst having a small carbon footprint and operational costs. This was complemented by dematerialisation strategies, recycled materials and a large native and edible landscape.

Coconut Crab has an embodied energy of 54.76 Tonnes of CO2e and is carbon negative by 8195 Tonnes of CO2e over a 50 year life cycle assessment period via its onsite renewables and carbon offsets that are made by each ceramic sale. This means that the studio offsets its embodied energy by 149 times over 50 years.

The studio is 100% electric, including the two energy intensive kilns used to fire ceramics. A 7kW solar system is being installed to the existing dwelling as more roof space is available to maximise solar collection and offset their electricity usage in the home and in the studio. Energy produced by the on site solar panels estimated to meet 85% of demand from the studio operations, including the kilns (8400kWh produced vs 9864kWh consumed).

The project focused on dematerialisation strategies such as exposing the upper floor structure, stairs and handrail LVLs, no additional finishes and exposing services. The efficient two-storey square shape also meant maximum floor area was achieved with minimal building envelope materials.

The minimal depth of the dwelling and perforated upper floor allows greater cross ventilation and access to light from yard. The HRV system and ceiling fan also provides low energy ventilation. Its position under the large tree protects the studio from solar heat gains from the overhead summer sun. The South facing solar skylight enables hot air to be exhausted and provides additional light. Large highlight glazing to the North filters light deep into the studio throughout the day. And despite its Western orientation to the yard, the overhead tree, external blind and high performance design combats the harsh afternoon sun.

Due to the design heavily considering Passive House principles, airtightness was important. The building was sealed with a ProClima Intello membrane to achieve an airtightness of 2.63@50Pa, which well exceeds Green Star Homes (5@50Pa) and Code compliance (10@50Pa). Despite the airtightness not meeting the Passive House standard, a balance was struck between higher embodied energy windows and airtightness. The timber doors and windows were constructed locally by AHJ using recycled timbers. The low embodied energy of the units meant that the compromised air tightness was counteracted. In house calculations revealed that it would take 50 years for the reduced operational energy from airtightness to offset high performance glazing units.

The engineering of the building specifically catered to the root structure of the existing rear tree. Screw piles were located based off main root locations uncovered during hand-dug excavation. Maintaining a small footprint which nestles underneath the tree canopy, maximises the permeable landscape, ensuring the studio comes secondary to the diverse landscape. The clients have planted many native species including a Grass Tree ‘Gadi’, gum trees, hakeas, wattles and endemic grasses. Some unconventional native landscaping was employed to support vulnerable endemic bird species and frog and native bee habitats are abundant on the site. The clients also have a flourishing edible garden which has been retained throughout the construction. The rainwater retention pond also supports native plants, frogs and fish.