Beautiful, Sustainable Building Design
Avalon Pavilion House
The design brief was a long time brewing, with several different concepts developed and discarded along the way. The clients, who are passionate about sustainability, did not want to just make the house bigger, they wanted to make it better! …although it was a very small house to start with.
In the end we boiled the ‘needs’ down to three basics: the existing timber deck was rotting away and needed replacement (it was the main living area for most of the year), they needed a new main bedroom with en suite, and a new living room for winter evenings and cold winter days. And they wanted solar power to the max, with rainwater harvesting.
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The old cottage did not lend itself well to being extended for a variety of reasons, and so we decided to add a totally separate pavilion to the north, with a semi-covered breezeway between. The new deck is to the north, with a large awning frame for all weather use. The living room is totally passive solar, coupled to the new bedroom and en suite. The benign climate and uber-protected micro-climate mean that solar access with good insulation without thermal mass provides the winter heating, and the shading (and almost fail-proof sea breeze) provides the summer cooling.
The big PV system sits on the north facing roof, using a nice window in the tee cover provided by the spotted gums that characterise so much of Sydney’s northern beaches. Rainwater tanks nestle neatly below the floor of the old and new pavilions.
