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Top of Building with 6 PV panels and 2 HW panels with Gravity feed tank. |
This striking, contemporary and purpose built, compact two storey home packs a punch well above its weight in terms of functionality, beauty, climate control and tropical living – and all on a 380 square metre block.
With its rectangular footprint and commercial exterior, plus photovoltaic and solar hot water system visible from the road, not a day goes past without cars pulling up to have a closer look.
Temperature control, artistic expression and the application of lifelong learnings and skills are demonstrated in this extraordinary home. Construction type:
New home, two storey, concrete slab, highly insulated industrial steel portal and timber framed, custom orb / fibrecement clad walls, skillion metal roof.
Comfort in Townsville’s tropical climate has been achieved with doubly insulated roof and walls, the use of the thermal mass in the floor, a design that embraces indoor/outdoor living and the clever combination of convection and cross-ventilation providing incredible climate control. The home showcases leading edge energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and considered material choices throughout. The combined artistic talents of the owners Jenny & Stuart Tyler make this not only a truly innovative modern Queenslander but also an artist’s delight with tasteful artistic features aplenty.
Climate Zone:
Townsville is located in the Dry Tropics – there are two seasons: hot and humid (November to April) - the wet season, and a warm to hot dry season with low humidity for the other half of the year.
Design/Build Process:
This home was designed by Jenny’s son Sebastian, a Sydney Architect and built by the owners as an experimental project that is also an investment. Tyler Carpentry have extensive experience building custom eco-homes and this special home has been created as a demonstration of what can be done when craftsmanship and quality building are combined with sustainability and tropical design and draws on Stuart and Jenny’s diverse range of skills and life experiences.
The home features carpentry, eco-building construction, practicality, a passion for solar, Feng Shui, an eye for beauty, gardening, welding, stained glass and timber craftsmanship and lifelong learnings of eco-design .
The philosophy taken was to build slowly, to consider, be meticulous, encourage continuity of flow, to be thoughtful, artistic, taking pride in their craft. The methods they’ve chosen have sometimes taken them considerably longer than ‘the standard way of building’ but the result is a home with a different aesthetic and function.
As an investment of their own funds and labour, the plan is that when fully complete that this home will demonstrate their building capabilities. The question is, how will someone value this home? How do you value comfort? Thoughtfulness? Practicality? Beauty? Eco-consciousness? Artistry? Natural daylighting? Craftsmanship? Exquisite climate control? How do you value a home where there has been an investment in time, love, craftsmanship and infrastructure including renewables, cyclone and flood damage proofing, that will pay back handsomely over the years to come?
Walls:
The external walls have been designed in multiple layers to achieve resistance to cyclonic projectiles and allow for a very high level of insulation for maximum thermal control i.e. to completely block out heat.
The walling structure is an industrial steel portal frame and plantation pine infill with hardwood ply for impact resistance.
External cladding is alternately painted (feature jointed) fibre cement sheeting or galvanised mini or custom orb.
External wall cladding is lined with sarking and fully insulated (laminated reflective foil and batts), and the walls on the west and north facing walls have an 400mm wall cavity enabling the additional installation of extra aircell or fibreglass batt insulation.
Water proof fibre cement sheeting has been used to line internal walls on the ground floor and also around louvers on the second floor to avoid potential damage from water ingress during high winds or flooding (Most of Townsville has experienced flooding at one time or another). No plaster board has been used anywhere on the ground floor, meaning that should flooding of the lower floor ever occur it can simply be hosed out and allowed to dry out, avoiding significant damage to wall linings/finishing.
Plasterboard has been used to line some internal walls on the second floor, and the ceiling.
Wall and door frames are made of treated pine timber.
Cross-ventilation:
A key feature of this home is that the occupant has total control over the temperature of the home, they can ‘make the temperature happen’ simply by opening or closing a window.
The design uses the principle of cross ventilation (i.e. air will flow between openings) and enhancing convective airflow (that hot air rises) to ensure that there is airflow through the building on even the most breathless day!
Cool air enters the home on the ground floor.
Extensive louvre windows (aluminium frames & anodised for ease of maintenance) both downstairs and upstairs in the northern wall allow Townsville’s prevailing breezes from the north-east to enter the home whilst louvre panels to each room along the southern wall pull in cool air from the shady rainforest garden immediately outside.
Bi-folding doors/windows at both ends of both the studio downstairs and at the northern end of the lounge/dining area upstairs mean that the external walls at both ends of these spaces are openable.
Clerestory louvre windows (aluminium for storm security) are positioned along the entire length of the southern wall, just under the high end of the sloping ceiling, provides ample opportunity for warmer air to move through and out of the building, and in doing so create a vacuum, which in turn pulls in more cool air from below.
A staircase between the ground floor and the upper storey is open to allow for natural ventilation, and positioned adjacent oversized full length glass louvre windows, the stairwell functions as a light and vent well for the entire home, facilitating air moving in, up, through and out the other side of the home.
Partition walls that do not extend to the ceiling enable air rising up the stairwell to then flow unimpeded across the sloped ceiling to leave the house through the clerestory windows on the other side of the kitchen and living areas.
With all of the windows shut, warm air stays inside, providing passive warmth in winter, but open only a single window on the north side of the ground floor and another on the south wall upstairs and rapidly a breeze is created that can rapidly cool the home.
Window openings in the bathrooms are unusual and are long and low and open outwards at the top. The principle being that cool air near the ground is able to easily flow up and in through the window sucked in by the convection pull created by warmer air flowing up and out the other side of the home.
Casement and hopper windows are used in appropriate locations.
Indoor / Outdoor Living:
With 180m2 under roof – but with more than a third quasi ‘outdoor’ type rooms due to the integration of indoor and outdoor spaces, this home embraces tropical living.
Outdoor living areas on both levels extending out to the north / north-east on both levels stick out beyond the building footprint to achieve 270 degree views outside whilst still maintaining a strong yet seamless connection to open plan living areas inside.
An innovative, narrow deck ‘pathway’ wrapping along the southern side and front of the house provides easy barefoot access around the outside of the house and to the cool and lush rainforest garden along the southern side of the building. The pathway is replicated overhead in an unusual design feature that provides continuity to the eye and interest to the outside of the building.
Landscaping:
A lush rainforest garden created along the southern boundary of the property and immediately adjacent the southern side of the home is well shaded by the house and relatively self sustaining requiring minimal watering whilst providing privacy, pleasant views and a cool shady aspect to adjoining rooms.
Thermal Mass for passive heating / cooling:
With the home requiring extra deep concrete footings on the northern side of the building due to setback requirements from a sewer pipe running through the property, Stuart and Jenny designed full length glass louvers along the northern wall which allows winter sun to flood inside shining upon and heating up the concrete floor which then retains that heat before gradually reradiating it back into the home during the evening and night, passively keeping the home warm during the cooler winter months.
Shading of these same louvres prevents sun ingress in summer, with the thermal mass of the floor again used to benefit, this time the tiled floor remains cool to the touch.
Shading:
Due to the extensive insulation provided to all the external walls, shading of the north, west and east facing walls is not required. The southern wall is shaded by an eaves overhang.
Windows on the predominantly north facing wall have carefully devised external shading consisting of vertical blades positioned at exactly the right angle, spacing and width to ensure that sun is only able to shine through and inside the home during the three coolest months of the year. Due to the complex orientation of their home – the long side faces north westerly aspect, to get it exactly right Stu waited until the winter solstice to work out the ideal design, dimensions and angles of these vertical louvres.
Feng Shui:
The Tyler home ‘feels’ different – nurturing is the word that comes to mind, nurturing of all the senses... sight, touch, feel, as well as general wellbeing. And it is not by chance, as owner Jenny is a Feng Shui practitioner amongst her many talents and the home has been designed to avoid energy blockages, ensure air and energy flows and that it simply ‘feels good’.
Artistic Elements:
Adhering to the principle that there should be minimum 5% artistic component in everything, and with the owners complementary skills of Jenny’s art and whimsy and Stuart’s engineering/ construction/ welding and carpentry this home excels in this area.
Unlike most new homes today which struggle to have any real creative individuality as a result of the ‘fast’ and efficient design and construction process typical of project homes, this home is a journey of delight to lovers of the arts.
Artistic features in the home (mostly created by Jenny and Stuart) include:
Boardwalk and timber wall and roof trim concept to create a line of continuity around the building externally.
A continuous series of 15 slumped glass ‘window’ cubes flowing vertically down the facade over two floors and whilst internally providing both privacy and daylighting to the downstairs and upstairs bathrooms.
The use of different window shapes throughout, square, tall and skinny, long and low all feature.
Colourful contemporary stained glass windows feature in surprising places. In the studio downstairs a pair of square windows are a homage to Picasso.
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Photo · Notre Dame du Haut, or Ronchamp · Ronchamp, France |
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The entire dwelling is somewhat of a homage to Le Corbusier, the French designer who maintained that 2 storey budget accommodation need not look boring – indeed his designs are still revered today. |
Upstairs, inspired by Le Corbusier, the entire wall of the lounge and dining room is delightful, with odd shaped windows featuring combinations of both clear and coloured glass, providing immediate energy and interest to the room. Flowing lines and tones of green glance the light and it is evidence that beautiful spaces can be created through design.
Looking from the inside, the lounge room windows have been positioned for the best view lines to the outside avoiding unwanted views like the neighbours shed. And from the outside, neighbours also have an artistic perspective looking up at a feature wall of stained rather than the blank end of the building.
The images in the windows symbolise the Feng Shui ‘mountain’ support behind whilst providing art, light, views yet privacy all with light and shade and beauty.
Some of the windows are openable to allow through breezes.
An eye-catching feature in the kitchen is a tempered glass kitchen splashback featuring silhouetted ferns.
The open staircase is quite extraordinary. Featuring a steel whalebone ‘spine’ for the support and beautiful laminated timber treads.
Inside, adjacent the staircase, plenty of wall space has been allowed for art and art nooks that have been purposely designed to display larger objects.
The cost of approx. $350k for materials and subcontractors excluding their own labour for the house with approx $50k for the artwork plus the cost of the land makes this house an affordable alternative to conventional buildings.
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