Re-Generation House

Barton Taylor

• Architects

The clients love the quiet of the coastal town and its humble cottages on lawn clearings surrounded by bush. They were keen to maintain this atmosphere, tread lightly on the site and keep a strong connection to the bush.

photo_credit Barton Taylor — Barton Taylor

The existing discrete cottage had two bedrooms, a kitchen, dining room, deck, lounge room and laundry. The brief was to be able to host the clients, their four children and future generations. The existing dwelling was kept intact except for a renovation of the bathroom and moving the laundry into the new services and storage room. The addition is a similar modest pavilion with a second bathroom and multi-purpose rooms to increase capacity. The pavilions are separated to reduce the visual bulk of buildings on the landscape, and have been connected by a wooden deck that has become a preferred passage for crossing kangaroos and other fauna. This outdoor room becomes a place to be “outside” and frames the relationship to the lawn that will be home to yearly family volleyball rivalry.

The project’s aim was to explore how to provide the most amenity with the least environmental and physical impact. The dwelling is a get-away and only occasionally used so the clients decided that the embodied energy and resource depletion engendered by the installation of PV systems and water-tanks was not a current concern however provisions for future incorporation of EV chargers, batteries, PV and water tanks have been incorporated into the design. The thermal envelope is high performance with recycled timber windows with double glazing, a vapour permeable membrane and insulation that far exceeds BASIX requirements.

Where possible all materials have been sourced as reclaimed. Recycled brick, timber cladding, marble, railway sleepers, sandstone steps, tiles, basins, toilets, mirrors, and joinery have been sourced as second-hand or materials that were on their way to landfill. The collaboration between ASA, Second Edition and Jane Theau worked so well because of the shared respect for materials and the vision of minimising resource depletion by embracing the circular economy: second hand can be beautiful, robust and high-performance.

The majority of the finishes, fittings, fixtures and joinery in these spaces were salvaged from local waste streams or sourced from second-hand marketplaces by Second Edition. The marble floor was salvaged scraps collected from marble suppliers, the floor and wall tiles were excess stock from local renovations, the timber joinery is clad in timber flooring with substrates made from off-cuts of plywood. Plumbing fixtures (which were new and unused) were sourced from online marketplaces from people selling due to change of mind or mis-ordering. These non-traditional procurement methods became a testing ground for their implementation within a typical design and construction process.

The project’s embodied carbon is 50.5% lower than a built-as-usual (BAU) benchmark on a /m2 basis, due to the approach of: keep as much as possible, add as little as needed, and use the lowest impact materials possible. A 3.5kW PV system would be sufficient for the project to have a negative footprint over its lifecycle. Note that a 5.5kW system has been provisioned for but not yet installed.