Designed by Green Sheep Collective, Smart Home is a renovation and extension to a two-bedroom single-fronted timber Victorian cottage in inner Melbourne. It utilizes a wide range of social, health, environmental and passive solar design principles and products to create a high-level environmentally sustainable home that is also modestly-sized and affordable.

Smart Home aims to become ‘An outstanding, affordable home’: It was important to create an example of best-practice environmentally sustainable design that is both achievable and affordable for many Australians.
Photography: Emma Cross
The final build cost per square meter for this project is $2,300/m2 +GST. This is an excellent result for a home designed to high-level environmentally sustainable design principles, where products and materials included in the home have:
– positive impact on energy efficiency (lifting the efficiency of the whole home, not just the extension);

– low to zero emissions (such as E0 cabinetry, and healthy adhesives);

– ethical procurement, harvesting and work practices (such as radially sawn timbers);

– recycled and renewable components (such as Ecrete and Flexo recycled rubber flooring);

– low transport emissions;

– water saving impacts (such as Ecoverta water-saving units);

– life-cycle analysis, including post-use responsible disposal (such as Livos oils);

– preferred products such as GreenTag, GECA, and FSC certificatio...