environa studio research lab

environa studio has a long held commitment to innovative design for sustainable housing. The projects and research undertaken by environa studio into sustainable residential communities have concentrated on the development of housing models that greatly increase sustainability, often with greater densities, whist retaining diversity and individuality.

our interests centre on the use of traditional and innovative typologies to achieve higher densities, and hence greater efficiencies and sustainability, whilst retaining the qualities of the “home” that are so meaningful to most people. These housing types allow for privacy, amenity and sustainability for the occupants, whist retaining vital contact with the earth and the local community.

one model that has been very successful in this regard is the revival of the courtyard type, which provides an increased external wall area for climatic interchange (solar winter heating and passive summer cooling) and fosters an indoor-outdoor relationship which encourages healthy living. Our “House of the Future” project, exhibited at the Sydney Opera House in 2004, demonstrated how a typical Western suburban development of 10-12 dwellings per hectare can be trebled or quadrupled whist retaining all the lifestyle and amenity attributes that families and individual seek from suburban housing. This increase in density has dramatic implications for sustainability where the increased population makes services, power generation, water collection and recycling, waste management, etc more sustainable and efficient, reduces the use of precious resources and encourages more effective use of sustainable transport systems.

while much of the work is seeking ways to extend suburbia, particularly through “new urbanism”, we are heading in the other direction, seeking ways in which this desirable lifestyle can be achieved in a far more sustainable fashion, from increased communality In the building forms and site, to better land, energy and water use. We are reinterpreting the positives of past urbanity for a more sustainable future.