A Family Connection – Passive House by Team Green Architects

Informed by family connections to the site and its history, Passive House captures an extensive understanding of place with an active engagement with the surrounding elements. Team Green Architects focuses on a lessened carbon footprint within a contained and challenging framework as a respectful response to a long lineage.

Nestled into the surrounding hills of Arrowtown, near Queenstown, Passive House sees a unique family connection between architect and family farmland take on a new and conscientious chapter. Originally owned by his grandfather, Co-Founding Director of Team Green Architects Mark Read takes the opportunity to build upon a past legacy and propose a residence that sensitively engages with natural. Overlooking a collective of farm sheds built by Read’s grandfather and trees planted by his great grandmother, the site and its outlook are embedded with reminders of the past. The appropriate proposal of an energy efficient home with an intentionally low carbon footprint acts as a nod to the curating of such an important piece of farmland, while combining current innovation and technologies not previously developed.

Overlooking a collective of farm sheds built by Read’s grandfather and trees planted by his great grandmother, the site and its outlook are embedded with reminders of the past.

Built by DCD Ltd, Passive House is designed as a wholly encasing design project, from the architecture, interior design, landscape design and styling all by Team Green Architects. Home to its family of three, the forming of a cost-effective program and brief underpins the principles developed for the home, while grounding its direction. The slight and modest home then emerges as a two-bedroom residence, with one shared bathroom, laundry and open and connected living, dining and kitchen zone. Integrated into the slope and additional level is a third bedroom and bathroom to create a self-contained dwelling for visitors. By integrated key storage and amenity into the architectural elements, joinery conceals and allows for an optimisation of the floor plate and a focus on the surprising surrounding natural aspects.

With reducing the lifecycle carbon of the home a key priority, so too was achieving Certified Passive House Plus and Homestar 8 certifications. The form of the home then reacts through a restrained simplicity as it aligns to the sloping nature of the site, allowing to become embedded within the landscape. Through its containment within the one overall shape, openings are focused to optimise natural light and work with the winter and summer sun, while the verandah keeps unwanted sun away from the interior. Constructed of locally sourced SIPs (structural insulated panels) that have an additional layer of New Zealand Terra Lana wool integrated, the envelope of the home is idyllically insulated, airtight and protective.

Through its containment within the one overall shape, openings are focused to optimise natural light and work with the winter and summer sun, while the verandah keeps unwanted sun away from the interior.

Through considered simplicity, Team Green Architects creates Passive House as an extension of the landscape, working with the elements, instead of against them.