ENV Design

Working with Stephen from ENV Design has been awesome. We engaged Stephen to design our passive house knockdown/rebuild. Stephen took us all the way from initial concept design through to full house plans including detailed technical drawings. He guided the project flawlessly though the DA and drew up the comprehensive tender specifications for the builders. We aren’t the easiest clients in the world to work with either – wanting to build to the strict German Passivhaus standard (the ultimate benchmark for energy efficiency and thermal comfort) and incorporate a bunch of sustainable ideas like using straw-bale wall panels for the ground floor. Stephen is a great listener and took on all our ideas (and our many changes – sorry Stephen!), providing smart options for integrating them into the design. He also frankly (but tactfully) laid out the benefits and downsides so we could make educated decisions. And if Stephen didn’t immediately know the answer to our questions, he would follow it up and find it out. Stephen also has an excellent eye for the aesthetics of the house and came up with great solutions to give the house great form, not just function. Stephen’s friendly manner and great communications has made the whole process an absolute pleasure. We can’t recommend him highly enough.

ENV Design and Consulting have been instrumental in the design of our home. Their (Stephen’s) level of professionalism, knowledge, support, transparency, and communication was incredible and resulted in an amazing solar passive inspired home design. We brought a design to ENV wanting a professional opinion on its feasibility and environmental effectiveness and could not have been happier with the process. Stephen was supportive of our vision and took the time to gain an in-depth understanding of our motivations and goals for our new build in a friendly and caring manner. We were put at ease by Stephen’s professionalism quite early in the process, giving us the confidence to pursue our perfect design while putting our faith in Stephen that he had our best interests at heart. The design process as a result was collaborative, informative, skilled, exciting, and loads of fun! Stephen was full of ideas and at times sensitively and constructively challenged us on aspects that ultimately led to a much better outcome. Such aspects included passive solar design principles, building materials, lighting, heating/cooling, and internal efficiencies. We were super impressed with how responsive Stephen was, and how quickly he was able to take on board our feedback and revision ideas and turn them into working designs. We cannot recommend him and ENV Design strongly enough.