Australia is a vast country, sparsely populated west of the great divide and outside the coastal cities.
Housing in these remote and regional areas has been built in many ways - prefabricated buildings, standard designs built by local or visiting tradespeople, houses built with local ingenuity from local materials and all sorts of combinations.
Some of these houses are designed for climate and lifestyle, most are not.
The vast majority of Australia falls into three climate zones, the Kimberley region, which possesses a unique microclimate, has a climate characterised by a hot humid summer and warm winter otherwise known as tropical monsoon. Its landscape ranges from the red sand dunes of the great sandy desert, to dense savanna woodlands and grasslands, and high sandstone cliffs and escarpments. This makes conventional housing challenging, not just in dealing with climate, but dealing with dynamic rural communities.
The studio centres on the development of three homes: a family home, a house for sharing singles, and a house for a couple. Materials and construction methods are a combination local or imported strategies, and passive and sustainable design principles are of primary importance, in addition the houses are designed so that they can be extended easily.
dynamic and modular centred design
climate map of the coastal kimberley region
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