I probably would steer away from black if you want to keep the country theme

I chose stone although wood for example fits into the same catagory, as does copper then concrete and tiles to a lesser degree being manufactured but their uses are limitless!! On the floor, a bench, a wall, artwork or a feature!! There is pretty much nothing you can't do with all of these items, so I can't seen how all of them won't just keep on keeping on in different forms perhaps but none the less, still keeping on. Some bright spark will come up with a "new look" and it will go wild I'm sure in 2016 but what it might be is anyones guess but if I have to pick, I'll go copper!!

Running cladding in opposite directions gives a contemporary look. Many examples I've seen seem to vary the profile width each. ie. narrow verticals juxtaposed with broader horizontals. You could clad base in a recycled plastic timber-look product or composite timber cladding. (Colour stable and no maintenance). Stone could look fab too. Painting it the Farrier would definitely be simplest. You could do a contrast with the verandah floor and its edge.

As an architect, I have previously been taught that creating a sustainable home is about designing it so that living in it lowers energy and water use. This is achieved through designing for orientation, using thermal mass and specifying fixtures and finishes that are low impact, reuse water on site, etc. However, the latest research is showing that this is not enough to impact the rate of climate change. And that what we build from needs to be considered in order to make a dent. This is because the timeframe required to see the benefits of sustainable living in a home, is a longer play than the upfront construction from low tox, low energy, minimal footprint materials and methodologies. It has to be a two-pronged approach. Choose materials and products, and constructing efficiently with low energy and low waste. Having carbon neutral homes. And designing homes that over the long term, are low in energy and water consumption, and support the health and well-being of the occupants. A project was established in mid 2017, called “The Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project”. It involved the Sustainable Built Environment Council and ClimateWorks Australia, and is described as an industry-led initiative seeking improvements to energy requirements in the National Construction Code. The report was released recently, and what was amazing in this report was to read that 58% of Australia’s buildings in 2050, will be built after 2019 … which means that there’s huge potential to impact their performance and the environment through better energy requirements. And these energy requirements have not been rigorously updated since 2010, despite electricity prices having doubled over that time. Detached housing will comprise 64% of the new construction between 2019 and 2050. So every homeowner has the opportunity to seriously change the landscape of energy use and efficiency in our country. There’s some sectors of the industry really pushing back against this … largely because they believe it will dramatically dent their profit margins to have to build houses with higher star ratings. Australian homes, on average, perform very poorly, and our expectations are super low. Steve Baczek, an American architect, said something about American houses that I think sums it up for Australia as well ... “It’s not that High-Performance Houses cost too much; it’s that our idea of a fairly priced home is based on a history of building houses to meet embarrassingly low performance benchmarks. Clients don’t realise the difference between built to code vs built to last”.