The grey wall colour! This colour pallette from the deepest to the lightest has been on trend for a while now ... and it doesn't seem to matter what room of the house: it is becoming rather ho hum!! No proportion, balance, harmony with the elements in the room. Is this room a backpackers shared TV room?

The first thing we noticed was the beautiful light created by the back window and the blue curtains either side of it. What a fantastic room!

the plants on the back fence will give good impact once grown. The rug is more of a pain. This would be a cleaners nightmare. Gives the area impact but not a suitable design choice near a pool. The mirror looks good but near a bbq you are always going to have to wipe the grease from off the mirror. The plant will also have to be removed once you start cooking. The chair is to close to the bbq and the fridge. So this would have to be moved to be able to work in this area or open the bar fridge fully. I do not mine any of the furniture but not a suitable out come for the area where the design seems not to be workable. Vision is important but design area must also be hassle free.

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”.