Design Brief

This home was specially designed for Pete, a civil engineer, and Renate, an artist and paediatric occupational therapist with Kids Thrive Therapy, https://www.kidsthrivetherapy.com.au/.

Their home is a calm and family-focused space — supporting creative work, child-friendly living, and future sustainability. They also share their home with their dog, who enjoys the garden outlooks and connection just as much as the children.

Courtyard Connections

The couple wanted a single-storey, 3-bedroom home with every space enjoying views or glimpses of the surrounding garden. Mature pine trees in the rear garden were retained and the central fern courtyard was designed to connect all wings of the house — enhancing visibility, light, and passive solar access.

The courtyard links the living, rumpus, hallway, master suite, and kitchen/dining areas — so it becomes a hub of movement, daylight, and connection and a sheltered play space.

The rumpus room was positioned across the courtyard, so children could play independently but remain visible from the main living space. Other bedrooms and bathrooms open to the front garden, with some solar gain from the west, while the central and rear rooms gain warm northern sunlight through triple-glazed, thermally broken windows.

Practical Family Considerations

A carport with built-in workbench and roller-shutter storage supports bike maintenance, woodworking, and art projects. Beside it, there’s electric bike charging and secure bike parking loops, directly encouraging and enabling sustainable travel every day. Inside, the kitchen–living–dining zone is sunny and beautifully open to both garden and courtyard views. it opens onto a full width deck that is partially covered as an al fresco dining and outdoor living space.

The pantry/laundry is spacious and cleverly integrated, with ample storage and benches for preserving, pickling, and cooking gourmet meals.

A shared study area supports flexible work-from-home options, and Renate’s love of craft and creative making and Pete’s practical tinkering are supported by generous work bench space and storage for art and woodwork.

Interior Design and Aesthetics

We worked closely with the owners to develop a palette of joyful, warm materials that reflected their personality and design sensibility. This included plywood wall linings and deep window reveals, finished with crisp shadow gaps for texture and a clean, modern aesthetic.

Inspired by classic Bauhaus principles and mid-century modernism and architects like Hans Scharoun, the design features simple cubic forms, projecting bays, and strong horizontal lines — particularly evident in the low-slung carport set against the larger volume of the house.

A bold yet refined colour palette adds vibrancy: a bright red door set within a sheltered yellow entry bay provides a joyful counterpoint to the otherwise monochromatic concrete finishes and minimalist exterior.

Sustainable, Comfortable, and Future-Proof

This home performs effortlessly year-round:

• Thermally broken triple-glazed aluminium windows
• Heat recovery ventilation
• Heat pump hot water system
• Airtight, highly insulated SIPs structure
• All-electric design powered by a 10.8kW rooftop solar PV system

While a hydronic manifold and pipes were installed in the polished low CO₂ GGBS concrete slab for future heating, the house proved so comfortable that hydronic heating was never needed. Two small reverse cycle units are installed for extreme conditions, but are rarely used for more than an hour per day, even in peak summer or winter.

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