Delivering endless possibilities of an additional room for your home or business, Australia is at the forefront of their design, with Melbourne company Harwyn winning the prestigious 2015 Good Design Award for commercial and residential architecture.
Beautifully created and intelligently designed by renowned Melbourne architect, Selwyn Blackstone, Harwyn pods were conceived to meet increasing demand for more flexible and creative types of spaces as Australians continue to evolve the way they live, work and play.
Manufactured in Australia using PIR panels and Alucobond cladding, the self-contained, customisable ‘Harwyns’ are setting a new benchmark for innovative building models.
Dating back to 1958, the Good Design Awards are one of the longest standing and most esteemed design awards in the world. Harwyn pods now sit alongside some of Australia’s most iconic designs that have found national recognition following their Good Design Award, including the Hills Hoist, the Caroma Dual Flush toilet and the RØDE microphone.
We often hear about renovating for profit, but how about renovating for the environment? You may have chosen a block which doesn’t face north or have constructed your home out of brick, but that doesn’t mean there are no options for those looking to make their home more sustainable.
Housing efficiency is one of the biggest impacts we can have on the environment and a more efficient home is often kinder on your household bills. Below are my top tips for renovating to reduce your carbon footprint and your bills.
It’s all about energy
One of the first things to look at when considering how efficient your home is to look at your current insulation. Insulation is one of the best ways to save on cooling and heating costs and a properly insulated home could save you 50% on your power bills.
The Australian Government has produced a useful guide about insulating your home based on your home design and climate. Also look at taking advantage of this sunburnt country and all that free solar energy by installing solar panels and a solar hot water system. You can take this further by buying appliances with the maximum energy star rating.
Replace your windows
Consider replacing your windows with double-glazed ones with a high WERS (Window Energy Rating Scheme), this means you will lose less heat from your home.
The WERS scale ranges from zero to ten stars, at Ecoliv we use five-star WERS glass because not only is the ten-star WERS glass incredibly expensive but it is also only appropriate for high temperature industrial settings. In other words, totally inappropriate for a residential building! By choosing the five-star rating this will give you the optimal balance of cost, thermal performance and efficiency.
Be smart with water
Installing a water tank will reduce your reliance on the mains water and coupled with a high WELS (Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards) rated plumbing fittings will further reduce your water consumption.
When landscaping consider indigenous water saving or drought resistant plants, so that when an inevitable dry summer hits, you won’t have to worry about the lack of water to sustain them.
Re-paint with environmentally friendly paints
If you’re looking to repaint a room or your entire house make sure the walls are kept free from any nasties by using low VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) paints. VOC paints are not only harmful to the environment, but to humans as well. Chemicals found in VOC paints such as Formaldehyde and Benzene, emit vapours that are harmful if inhaled. Paint with less than 250 grams of VOCs per litre are considered low VOC paints.
Even if you are only able to implement a few of these strategies, you will be able to create a more sustainable, more environmentally friendly and above all, economical home.
— Ashley Beaumont is the director of Ecoliv and is passionate about sustainability in the construction industry. His eco prefab homes achieve an eight-star energy rating and have won numerous industry awards with the BDAV, NBDA and HIA.
Home ownership has always been the Australian dream and our passion for home improvement has reached fever pitch. Renovating is the go-to solution for anyone who is looking for extra space, however the ups and downs of the renovation rollercoaster have become popular fodder for dinner party conversations.
Rather than trying to work within the constraints of a shipping container, Harwyn has conceived its prefabricated pods from the ground up, creating architecturally designed, self-contained modular living spaces that deliver endless possibilities of an additional room for home, business or recreation.
We put the Harwyn Pod head to head with a traditional renovation to see how it stacks up.
TIME
Traditional Renovation
How long will the renovation last? Type it into Google and you will get some wildly predictable answers, all centred around trying to be realistic. One month is a great outcome; four to six months is more realistic depending on the size of the project.
Harwyn Pod
A Harwyn Pod is installed within 6 weeks of choosing your colours and finishes in the showroom.
PRICE
Traditional Renovation
A renovation can start off on time and on budget until the first floorboard is ripped up, exposing skeletons that seem like they would have been best left unearthed. Like the certainty of taxes and death, unexpected surprises await you in every renovation and with them come blown out budgets.
Harwyn Pod
The price of a Harwyn Pod is decided once the final finishes and colour are chosen in the showroom. At the same time, everything is determined including the site preparation required. This provides a lot of certainty and no creeping costs.
SHARING YOUR HOME
Traditional Renovation
Seasoned renovators are all too familiar with living through the noise, the dust and what seems like hundreds of workman sharing your home for the better part of six months, sometimes longer.
Harwyn Pod
Harwyn pods are built in our factory and the only contact clients have with our workers is when we prepare the site, which usually takes around four hours and another hour on the day of installation. This means the peace and tranquillity around your home will not be disturbed for a lengthy period of time.
DECISIONS
Traditional Renovation
What materials to use, how will the finish look, should there be more power points, will the space feel right? There are many decisions that need to be made in a renovation and more will crop up on a regular basis throughout.
Harwyn Pod
Harwyn’s architects and designers have put more than 45 years experience in to making most of the difficult decisions, such as choice of construction material, placement of elements and finishes, for our clients. Leaving just the final decisions on the customisable options, such as size and colour, to be made by the client. Also the Harwyn Pods can be viewed in our showroom so clients can see clearly what minor changes will look like without trying to imagine it.
Watch this video of a Melbourne yoga studio owner using a Harwyn pod, which was craned into her existing premises:
— Jason Fremder is the managing director of Harwyn, the makers of beautifully designed, prefabricated studio pods, ideal for those who are serious about creation and recreation.
Ask many Australians to describe prefabricated homes and they’d come up with just two ideas: kit homes and log cabins. Back in the 1970s, both of these concepts seemed like fine ideas, particularly for a weekender, but not the type of abode most would choose to build as their primary residence.
A Prebuilt home
Thankfully, there have been major improvements, and prefabricated housing is the building industry’s next generation. At the moment, about $4.6 billion per annum is spent on the prefab housing sector, with this figure expected to rise by about five percent each year for the next decade.
The reason why this is occurring is clear! “Whether you’re building a one-bedroom shack or a large, high-end primary residence, the process is very simple,” says architect Ramon Pleysier, of architecture and interior design firm Pleysier Perkins. For the past eight years, his firm has worked alongside us at Prebuilt. As a Melbourne-based company, we have built and installed more than 300 homes. “Since working with Prebuilt we’ve been able to formulate the most efficient working model possible,” explains Ramon. “We now have a very logical way of working with projects of any size.”
A Prebuilt home
For a client, the steps are simple. First, they collaborate with the architect on design. Prebuilt has four pre-designed styles that can be individualised or used as a starting point; alternatively, there’s the option of a customised solution. Once a design is agreed upon, the house is modelled, right down to the cladding types and paint colours.
For the average person looking to build a home, this is where the benefits of prefabrication become obvious. It’s a really precise approach to delivering a product. Full approval at the modelling stage means an accurate budget can be presented and, with all homes built in the Melbourne factory, there are no delays due to bad weather or overextended tradesmen.
A Prebuilt home
A lot of the houses we’re delivering across Australia are constructed in the factory in 12 weeks, but would take roughly a year to build on site. That also helps with budget because you’re not having to finance the project for extended lengths of time when you can’t live in it.
As far as cost goes, the worst-case scenario is the budget would be the same as that for a house built completely on site. Though normally the higher quality or more complex the project, the more cost savings can be obtained.
– Rob Colquhoun is the managing director of Prebuilt, a Melbourne-based company responsible for building and installing more than 300 homes – with budgets ranging from $200,000 to $3 million – since 2002.
Ever dreamed of your own private, separate space at the end of the garden for a home office, craft room, man cave or something else entirely? Love the idea of working from home but not sure you have the space? Worried that converting the shed will mean something totally impractical in winter and full of spiders? Don’t worry, I have the solution! Behold, the backyard room!
Looks pretty nice doesn’t it? Launched in March at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, where it won the sustainability award, Backyard Room is an innovative new offering from the team at Archiblox. Whether it’s a home office, studio or exercise room, the pre-fabricated Backyard Room has the potential to unlock a world of possibilities in your own backyard.
