A colourful new Geelong house opens the door on sustainable design.

“You can live well and you can live consciously,” Anne Wissfeld says. “It isn’t an either-or choice.” From high across the Barwon River, a red streak on her new home stands out like a crimson bolt of lightning. But don’t mistake the Queens Park House for a power-guzzling eyesore.

“For me, this house really connects you with nature,” says the architect, Mark Sanders. The corrugated iron roof is slightly twisted, matching the contour of the sharp hill leading to the riverbank. It looks sleek and unobtrusive among a flock of pitched-roof homes.

A combination of hard-nosed eco commitment and eye-catching design, this 200m2, three-bedroom house won the 2007 Housing Industry Association GreenSmart Building of the Year. It is also in the running for this year’s Royal Australian Institute of Architecture awards, to be announced in July.

As you approach the house, down the steep road towards the river, your gaze strikes the solar panels and solar hot water system on the roof. Then you absorb the vivid colours: window frames and doors painted in green, yellow, blue and red.

The walls are clad in sustainable plantation timber and there’s a patchwork fence made from cut off second-hand palings. A crushed, recycled concrete and brick path leads past the veggie garden to the red front door and north-facing sunroom. This is no ordinary abode.

“The brief was for a deep green level of sustainability in terms of aiming for 100% [renewable] electricity coverage and water consumption, as well as wastewater reuse and really sustainable materials,” Sanders says.

It’s a cool and bleak autumn day, but the temperature in the sunroom is well into the 20s. Sanders’s eyes light up below his short, greying hair. “Imagine this in winter?” he enthuses. Warm air can flow from here into the living area to keep the temperature comfortable without extra heating.

The block’s orientation made passive solar design a challenge. “We’re on a goat hill here basically,” Sanders says, eyeing the slope. “If we can get to clients to assist them in choosing sites, that’s always a great help.”

But for the Queens Park House, Anne and her German husband Jan had their hearts set on this south-facing site leading to the river. “We chose the wrong block,” Anne admits, a light brown bob framing her face. To maximise sunlight, the house is set well back from the street.

The sunroom opens onto a large, bright living area with white walls, featuring a polished concrete floor and a high, slanting ceiling. Next to the door, toy cars and trucks are strewn around a wooden railway track.

The Wissfelds and their two-year-old son moved in over a year ago. “We don’t have air conditioning and the house doesn’t overheat,” says Jan. A stay-at-home father, he enjoys the perks of the smart design. “The passive solar works extremely well in winter…it’s always very comfortable.”

Eco-friendly elements include double-glazed windows with external shading for summer, as well as insulation in the walls, floor and roof. The exposed concrete slab provides ‘thermal mass’. A heavyweight material, it absorbs and stores heat, helping balance out the room temperature between night and day.

Two skinny, horizontal windows look out over the river, keeping the gumtree view but cutting the amount of glass facing south. According to Sanders, this is a must. Even double-glazed windows still let out heat at between five to seven times the rate of an insulated wall.

The 39 year-old has focussed on sustainable design since graduating from Deakin University’s School of Architecture in Geelong in the mid-1990s. He started Third Ecology Architects with co-director Glen Rodgers six years ago, and staff numbers have now grown to ten. As specialists in sustainable construction, demand is high. “We’re just flat out,” he says. “Certainly there’s more consumer interest and more business interest. I think it’s the real deal, not a kind of fad.”

Tucked along one wall of the main room, the narrow kitchen is fitted with bench tops made from solid, recycled Victorian hardwood. At the end is a walk-in pantry, stocked high with jars and spices. Placed in the southeast corner, it stays cool year round. “Instead of having these bigger fridges, there’s a lot of things we keep in the pantry,” says Jan. “It’s more of an old style larder,” Sanders adds. A wicker basket brimming with tomatoes sits next to a small flour grinder full of grain.

The fridge and dishwasher are both highly energy efficient, like all the appliances and lighting throughout the house. In summer, the 2040-watt solar system installed on the roof generates more electricity than they need. The excess is fed into the grid, and the credits they receive balance out their higher energy use during winter. “We didn’t have a power bill for the first year,” Jan says, proudly.

In the garage the inverter shows that right now, under cloudy skies, the panels are putting out about 240 watts. Jan thinks it is more than the house is using.

Planning the house was an arduous process, but including a solar power system was non-negotiable. Inspired by eclectic Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the couple’s initial plans were, according to Sanders, for “a pretty crazy building”. “The whole house was curved.” Anne explains. “We had a stream running through the house. It would have been utterly amazing. And totally impossible to do.”

A soaring construction estimate forced them to cut some of the more unusual design features. “The essence of the house is the same…but the structure has been so simplified,” Jan says. “When we had to reduce costs we always looked at how [to do it] without compromising on the environmental issue.” In the end, including the garage and workshop space, building costs came in at around $2500 per square metre. Sanders says that’s about normal for a custom built home, and is quick to point out the house’s very low ongoing bills.

From the living area, a light green door leads into the bedrooms, bathroom and laundry on the west side of the house, each with a different coloured entrance. Sanders recommends low Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) paints and joinery finishes, as well as water-based coatings on all timberwork. As a result, the Wissfelds say the Queens Park House never had a noxious new home smell.

Sanders leads on to the laundry. Here, instead of a dryer, the home has an innovative drying cupboard. White doors slide open to reveal a deeper than normal space, with a duct for air circulation and a gunmetal grey ladder-like frame on the wall: a hydronic heating panel. Instead of a standard ducted system, the house warms up with hot water pumped through these pipes. “It’s the most efficient form of heating,” Sanders says. “It’s a little more expensive to put in, but the running costs are better than half. It’s quiet and a lot healthier too. There’s no air movement blowing dust around.”

In the bathroom, the heating pipe-ladder works as a warm towel rack. Nearby, next to a narrow window, is a short, deep Japanese-style bathtub. Rather than lie down, you sit in it, and plunge yourself past the shoulders. Sanders says it uses less water than a standard tub, but that doesn’t matter, because the house runs entirely on rainwater harvested on the roof. “It’s a very efficient water collector,” Anne says. Despite Geelong’s low rainfall, she says they haven’t used any mains water since they moved in.

Two 9600-litre tanks are parked side-by-side below the house. After rain, Jan dumps the first flush in a separate 700-litre tank to use on the garden. A filter and steriliser cleans the rest before it is put to use inside. “The water quality is better than what comes out of the tap, by a long shot,” Sanders says.

A yellow rubber ducky perches by the bath. But there’s no risk Anne and Jan will throw their baby out with the bath water: all wastewater stays on-site. Outside, a black tank pokes out from the earth. It is a vermiculture treatment system. Worms chomp through all the grey and blackwater before it’s filtered and pumped to the top of the block and for irrigation underneath the garden.

There’s no smell and no chemicals breaking it down. Sanders adds another benefit. “You’re not swimming amongst it,” he says. Normally, Geelong’s sewerage is treated at Barwon Water’s Black Rock plant and then pumped into the ocean. He believes the Queens Park House could be the first in Geelong or Melbourne to use a system where all wastewater is processed and reused on-site.

For Sanders, sustainable design is the future for his industry and he’s excited about leading the change. “The sort of technologies here are at the forefront, but in five years time, they will be the standard,” he says. Right now, energy smart designs are not beyond anyone’s reach. With good advice, he says, “you can halve energy and water consumption and still be cost neutral with whatever plan you have.”

The Wissfelds are delighted with their new house and glad that its sustainability can be used as an example for others to follow. “It’s about stretching the boundaries. Here’s a house right out to the extreme. What are the things we can learn from it and apply more generally?” Anne asks. But Jan, a keen wood worker, has one minor complaint. With a wry grin, he waves towards the back of the house. “There’s a little workshop down there. That’s the only problem. Don’t mention it. It could be bigger.”

Sustainable Design: the golden rules

Is small is good. Big houses use more of everything. ‘Honey, do we really need a three-tier home cinema?’

Face north. Plan living areas for the north side, to make the most of winter sun.

Reflect on windows. Go for double-glazing to cut down heat loss. North-facing windows are best, but shade them in summer. Keep east and west windows small – the lower sun is tricky to shade. Minimise windows on the sunless south.

Insulate. Good insulation can cut heat loss by up to 70%. Put it in ceilings, walls and floors.

Make it massive. Thermal mass, that is. Heavy building materials like concrete, brick and stone absorb and store heat, curbing the extremes of winter and summer.

Close the gaps. Be sure to seal all external doors, windows and exhausts. According to eco-architect Mark Sanders, gaps in leaky houses can add up to “having a one metre by one metre window permanently open.”

Use efficient appliances and fittings. Cut down on electricity, gas and water use. Choosing one extra star rating can mean savings of between 10-30% on running costs.

Go renewable. Super size your sustainability with solar panels and hot water, water tanks and wastewater treatment systems. Remember to cash in on hefty government rebates.

Many of us barely know who lives next door, but could sharing with our neighbours be the green future for our cities? Meets the Melbournians who want to change the way we live.

Giselle Wilkinson is dreaming of giving up her idyllic backyard. She lives on a leafy property in Heidelberg; a big block adorned with veggies, fruit trees, chooks and ducks.

Wilkinson is slim and fit, bearing a healthy glow from regular gardening and bike riding. The 54-year-old co-founder of the Sustainable Living Foundation has been walking the green talk for most of her life.

But now she hopes to take her commitment even further. She is working on a development that will put her land where her mouth is. “I’m only going to give this up for something better. Better for me means as sustainable and affordable as we can possibly make it,” she says.

‘Cohousing’ is a type of a residential development where your home is one of about 16 to 30 clustered around a common house and open space.

Picture this: just home from work, you lock your bike on the racks then walk to your door, chatting pleasantly with Mrs Jones on the way. Then you check on the kids, playing with their friends in the shared recreation room of the common house. A mouth-watering aroma wafts in from the common kitchen nearby. Tonight is shared meal night. Your dinner, cooked by your neighbour, is almost ready. You pour yourself a glass of white and put your feet up.

“I reckon you do it better when you do it together,” Wilkinson says. Cohousing residents own separate, self-contained homes, but regularly share meals and some facilities like a common garden, laundry, workshop and recreation rooms. But there are no hard and fast rules. Each project is different because the residents themselves drive the planning process.

Andrew Partos spent three weeks last year touring cohousing developments in Europe and North America. “These are not communes, gated-communities or religious sects,” he says, mindful of stereotypes.

With close-cropped hair and modern black-rimmed glasses, Partos is no alternative guru. He is a senior urban designer at VicUrban, the Victorian state land development agency and is keen to stress that cohousing can fit into mainstream city life. “In Denmark ten percent of new residential development is cohousing” he says. “People buy, sell or rent like anywhere else. They retain their independence but collaborate in the running of their community.”

Denmark is the cradle of cohousing. The movement began there in the 1970s and spread through Europe and then to the USA by the 1990s, taking root in California. According to Partos, there are 80 completed cohousing communities in the USA and over 100 more under construction.

In the developments he visited, Partos found that the supportive lifestyle attracted particular people. “There is a wide range, but…they are generally well educated, with professional careers ranging from childcare and teaching to engineers, architects, lawyers and doctors.”

Partos is confident the trend will catch on in Australia, pointing to its success in North America, where people also value the privacy and independence of their homes. He says VicUrban is keen to add cohousing to its development projects. “We see it as meeting many of our sustainability objectives. We’re currently researching and finding out where it might get some good support in Melbourne.”

For now, our suburbs look very different. We are building bigger houses for fewer people; half our homes now have only one or two occupants. On the fringes of our cities we have sown rows of costly, energy intensive McMansions. Stocked with appliances and poorly serviced by public transport, our houses are taking a growing toll on the earth’s fragile resources.

But our eco-footprint is not the only concern. We are also reaping a difficult social bounty from our building habits. Our suburbs cannot help but fashion our community life. “We shape our dwellings and afterwards, our dwellings shape us,” Winston Churchill said, wisely, in 1943.

Social researcher Hugh MacKay has tracked Australians’ belief that society is deteriorating. In his latest book, Advance Australia…Where?, MacKay says we tend to blame materialism, selfishness and a lack of connectedness for our social problems. But amongst this anxiety, MacKay senses a desire for change. “Many of the changes to our way of life have had the effect of fragmenting and isolating us and, in response, there’s a new craving for a sense of belonging. We like the idea of a small village, urban or otherwise. We want to reconnect; we want to feel part of an identifiable community.”

Cohousing offers reconnection. Residents usually try to establish a vibrant neighbourhood spirit. “The greatest benefit from a community point of view that you are creating a place where everyone knows each other,” Partos says. “If there is someone sick or elderly there are always people that will look out for them. The same with children, it creates a really safe environment.”

Housing affordability is also a thorny concern across the nation, but building smaller homes and sharing resources, like the laundry, tools and gardening equipment, can significantly cut costs. Crucially, this economisation is also a big plus for the environment. Partos found “universally high” eco-standards across the estates he visited. Typically, they had low energy, water and waste needs and encouraged alternative transport, recycling and homegrown veggies. “When you have a number of houses working together you can actually do things that individually would be very difficult and expensive. You can have very efficient central heating systems, or solar hot water systems, and the cost per dwelling is significantly less,” he says.

Ian Higginbottom, founder of Cascade Cohousing, in South Hobart, knows these benefits first-hand. Begun in 1991, Cascade was the first development of its kind in Australia. Within a short bike ride of downtown Hobart, they used passive solar design techniques to build ecologically sound homes.

But it wasn’t always easy. “We were held together by a common vision to build something,” Higginbottom says. When they finally finished their arduous owner-builder creations, old clashes surfaced from unresolved conflicts years before. “I could have rung people’s necks multiple times over,” he admits. “Any time you get a group of people together, that happens, it’s a part of being human beings.

“We were very lucky that we didn’t self-destruct about five years ago,” he says. Then, about a third of the residents decided to work hard at resolving the accumulated grudges and resentments within the group. The change was overwhelming. “All the tension went out of our meetings,” he says. “People who weren’t talking to each other started talking again.”

Higginbotham is now adamant that learning how to resolve conflict and deal with people is a crucial part of living in the community. “We’ve been through a learning curve and that’s incredibly fulfilling,” he says. “If we can’t make a community work with a set of neighbours, how do we expect our governments to resolve conflict and at a national and international scale?”

Despite Cascade’s success, there are still only two others like it in Australian cities – Cohousing Cooperative in Hobart and Pinakarri in Perth. With a red-hot real estate market, financing is usually the showstopper for new developments.

Adam Tiller, from Merri Cohousing in Melbourne’s inner north, says his group has been trying to secure land for six years. “We can get the money we need, but not quickly enough.” Despite its setbacks, they still have over 300 people on their mailing list and Tiller hopes that interest from Partos and VicUrban will boost their chances of success.

Back in Heidelberg, Giselle Wilkinson surveys her flourishing veggie patch, knowing it will soon disappear – albeit temporarily – to make way for the 16 units in the plans. With the backing of the not-for-profit organisation Common Equity Housing, she and a team of friends and volunteers have secured the two blocks adjoining her house.

They hope to begin the development within six months and she understands it won’t be all smiles and group hugs. “Sometimes even living with yourself can be hard. But this is about building our community and the resilience we need to face a very uncertain future.” She dreams that her blocks will become a “little haven on the planet” with links stretching far out into the community.

One thing for certain is that Wilkinson will build a future surrounded by people. She recently heard a story from another cohousing development. “Someone said it once took them 40 minutes to get to their front door from their push bike, just saying hello to everybody. I like that, because I think slowing down is a difficult thing to do these days.”

Having your own community, and independence too

Each cohousing development is different, but the blueprint looks like this: 16 to 30 self-contained houses are clustered around a common house and garden. Residents are independent. They own their own homes and buy and sell like anywhere else, but work together to run their small community.

Sharing – things like tools, a laundry and regular common meals – cuts costs, eco footprints and the isolation of suburban living.

Cohousing kicked off in Denmark in 1972, when the doors opened at Saettedammen, the first development of its kind. For the 27 families who built it, the goal was to create a greater sense of community than they found in normal subdivisions or apartment complexes. From then on, bofaellesskaber (literally, “living communities”) sprung up throughout the country.

Inspired by what they saw in Denmark, American architects Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett coined the term ‘cohousing’. Their 1988 book, Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, spawned communities across North America. Now, there are 80 completed projects in the USA and over 100 more under construction.

In Australia, although cohousing organisations exist in almost every state, only a few developments are up and running. But that is set to change.

Around the world … and closer to home

Pinakarri Community – Perth

The first residents moved into Pinakarri in 1999 and now there are almost 40 people across 12 passive solar designed houses in Hamilton Hill, a suburb just south of Fremantle. They eat three shared meals a week in the common house and work together to care for their permaculture garden. If you want to know more, why not front up for some food? They host open community dinners on the first Friday of every month. Bring a plate.

N Street Cohousing – Davis, California

Think cohousing couldn’t happen in your street? N Street is a suburban street like any other. But over the last two decades, 17 houses have knocked down their fences and begun to share their gardens and meals – they call it ‘retrofit’ cohousing. Someone even donated their home for the group to use as a common house.

Cohousing is coming to Melbourne

The Heidelberg team is on the lookout for people interested in their cohousing community. Plans are well advanced for a ‘dark green’ development: there will be 16 units ranging between two and four bedrooms, as well as a common house and veggie garden. www.slf.org.au/communities

VicUrban

The state land agency wants to put a cohousing development on one of its sites. For more information – or to say you might be interested – contact VicUrban.