Houzz Tours
Eco Living
Sustainable Homes
Houzz Tour: Eco Home With Rooftop Garden
This affordable, sustainable and compact home is green from top to bottom
When it comes to building a house, compromise is often a necessity. For Emilio Fuscaldo, founder of Nest Architects, and his partner Anna Krien, location, affordability and sustainability were their priorities, so these features won out over a lesser preference for a larger home. To realise their priorities, the couple bought a sub-divided backyard in Coburg, Melbourne, and designed a family home that would be sustainable from top to bottom.
They got creative with sourcing materials, fittings, and furnishings, and then Fuscaldo rolled up his sleeves to save money on tradespeople. According to Fuscaldo, building the four-room dwelling – at just 80 square metres – “has required creativity and problem solving, yet demonstrated that design, dreams, sustainability and affordability can work together to create a beautiful home.”
Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Emilio Fuscaldo, Anna Krien and their two toddlers, plus their cat Puska, and dog Mowgli
Location: Coburg, Melbourne, Victoria
Year completed: 2014
Size: 80 square metres, 4 rooms
Architect: Emilio Fuscaldo, founder of Nest Architects
Awards: 2014 AIA Victoria Awards – Sustainable Architecture Commendation
They got creative with sourcing materials, fittings, and furnishings, and then Fuscaldo rolled up his sleeves to save money on tradespeople. According to Fuscaldo, building the four-room dwelling – at just 80 square metres – “has required creativity and problem solving, yet demonstrated that design, dreams, sustainability and affordability can work together to create a beautiful home.”
Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Emilio Fuscaldo, Anna Krien and their two toddlers, plus their cat Puska, and dog Mowgli
Location: Coburg, Melbourne, Victoria
Year completed: 2014
Size: 80 square metres, 4 rooms
Architect: Emilio Fuscaldo, founder of Nest Architects
Awards: 2014 AIA Victoria Awards – Sustainable Architecture Commendation
To build their home, Fuscaldo and Krien bought the north-facing backyard of a California bungalow, with a laneway running along its northern boundary. Fuscaldo and Krien then adapted the land to make it a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable alternative to densification – a little like Melbourne’s characteristic inner-city laneways.
“The house is not expansive,” says Fuscaldo, “but it does demonstrate the capacity of a small space to become a functioning, private and generous home.”
The house embraces the informality of Australian living, with no formal front door, just an informal back door. “It provides a warm setting in which the intimacy of daily life plays out, surrounded by a garden, sand pit and vegie patch,” says Fuscaldo.
“The house is not expansive,” says Fuscaldo, “but it does demonstrate the capacity of a small space to become a functioning, private and generous home.”
The house embraces the informality of Australian living, with no formal front door, just an informal back door. “It provides a warm setting in which the intimacy of daily life plays out, surrounded by a garden, sand pit and vegie patch,” says Fuscaldo.
Inside, the house is open without being open-plan. Only two internal doors connect the four rooms – one for the bathroom and the other for the children’s bedroom. An open bookshelf divides the living area and main bedroom, allowing light and air to flow between the two spaces.
Sofa and Knoll armchair: The Junk Company
Sofa and Knoll armchair: The Junk Company
Undertaking a lot of the work himself, Fuscaldo built the open bookcase from plywood he ordered, cut to size and screwed together himself.
With the help of a carpenter, Fuscaldo lined the ceilings with black laminate, but largely chose raw, reused and reclaimed materials for both inside and out. “In order to save money, we chose materials that already came with a decorative finish and therefore did not need another tradie to cover them up and make them pretty,” he says.
This included the concrete floor, which already has an interesting surface, and recycled-brick walls (interior and exterior), which have a patina that didn’t need painting. Application of a clear finish to the walls and floor avoided the need for specialist tradies.
Red bricks: Patti’s Bricks
This included the concrete floor, which already has an interesting surface, and recycled-brick walls (interior and exterior), which have a patina that didn’t need painting. Application of a clear finish to the walls and floor avoided the need for specialist tradies.
Red bricks: Patti’s Bricks
The preference for recycled materials extends to the numerous finishes and furnishings that all have a previous history, and contribute to the laid-back, eclectic feel of the home. For example:
- the laundry curtain is an off-cut from fashion designer Lisa Gorman,
- the kitchen tiles are leftover from a friend’s renovation,
- the kitchen bench is a recycled workbench,
- the dining table came from a closing-down fabric wholesaler,
- the pantry is an old cobbler’s storage unit,
- a fellow Melbourne architect provided the toilet,
- the bathroom bench first saw life in a bowling alley, and
- the eaves have been in two other buildings before.
Fuscaldo and Krien avoided having any joinery built, and instead “simply used what we could find on eBay to store our bits and bobs”. This was not only a move to be sustainable and keep within budget, but also a preference for openness. “One pet hate,” says Fuscaldo, “is standing in a kitchen not knowing where anything is.”
Kitchen workbench: eBay; kitchen sink: The Junk Company
Kitchen workbench: eBay; kitchen sink: The Junk Company
The kitchen workbench (bought on eBay for $500) is recycled from a shopfront in Melbourne. “I spent three days sanding the dark green paint only to reveal a fluorescent orange undercoat,” recalls Fuscaldo. “Two more days of sanding and a swan was born.”
The bathroom basin, shower rose and bathroom bench are all sourced from eBay for a fraction of their regular retail price.
Bathroom taps: Astra Walker
Bathroom taps: Astra Walker
Throughout their home, colours, textures and vintage furniture create a warm and vibrant feel among the surrounding industrial materials. Simple pendants with exposed bulbs (to avoid the cost of fittings) provide lighting.
Pendant lights: Ross Gardam; Thonet dining chairs and Knoll armchair: Angelucci 20th Century
Pendant lights: Ross Gardam; Thonet dining chairs and Knoll armchair: Angelucci 20th Century
Passive solar design features include a northern orientation, external shading and effective cross-ventilation, all of which reduce the need for heating and cooling devices. A north-facing eave provides shade in summer, and sunlight and hydronic heating keep the insulated and exposed concrete floor warm in winter. “The thermal mass of insulated concrete,” says Fuscaldo, “sees the house’s inhabitants sprawled quite happily on the warm floor in the depths of winter.”
The house also has double-skin brick walls with foil cavity insulation, finished with a clear, low VOC water-based sealer. It is also the first house in Victoria with structural timber that is entirely Forest Stewardship Council-certified.
The house also has double-skin brick walls with foil cavity insulation, finished with a clear, low VOC water-based sealer. It is also the first house in Victoria with structural timber that is entirely Forest Stewardship Council-certified.
Fuscaldo’s handiwork allowed a larger portion of the budget to be dedicated to sustainable aspects of the home – particularly the pièce de résistance, the green roof. The green roof garden not only beautifies the neighbourhood, it also provides insulation and thermal regulation to the interior of the house.
In fact, Fuscaldo says he didn’t know how warm the green roof would keep the house in winter and cool in summer. “We don’t use any air conditioning in summer as the average outside temp is 32 degrees Celsius and the average internal temperature is 26 degrees. In winter, we’ve cut our gas usage by 27 per cent.”
In fact, Fuscaldo says he didn’t know how warm the green roof would keep the house in winter and cool in summer. “We don’t use any air conditioning in summer as the average outside temp is 32 degrees Celsius and the average internal temperature is 26 degrees. In winter, we’ve cut our gas usage by 27 per cent.”
“Around the perimeter of the roof we planted succulents that require little to no watering,” Fuscaldo says. Local drought-tolerant grass (Sir Walter Buffalo) provides a flat area in the centre for relaxing. After some trial and error, the planting includes:
- Lamb’s ears (Stachys bizantina),
- Blue chalksticks (Senecio serpens),
- Blue hens and chicks plant (Echevera glauca),
- Inland pigface (Carpobrotus modestus), and
- Blue flax-lily (Dianella revoluta).
A watering system installed under the plants proved to be unnecessary, as the types of plants on the roof could tolerate the wind, sun, rain and somewhat thin soil profile easily. Water collected from the roof is used in the toilet system, and is also used on both the roof garden and the ground garden.
Plus, as Fuscaldo says, “Our neighbours love it. I thought they would hate seeing us up there and think we were spying on them. But in fact, all the neighbours have said how much they enjoy looking up and seeing all that green.”
Plus, as Fuscaldo says, “Our neighbours love it. I thought they would hate seeing us up there and think we were spying on them. But in fact, all the neighbours have said how much they enjoy looking up and seeing all that green.”
On reflection, Fuscaldo says that he could have certainly built the house for less money, but that his desire for sustainable elements, such as the green roof, hydronic heating, Forest Steward Certified timber and double-skin brick walls, pushed the affordability of the project.
However, it’s still hard to go past a sustainable, functional and liveable house in a desirable location – especially when it’s your first family home.
View more houses and buildings with green rooftops, along with some advice from Fuscaldo on installing a green rooftop.
However, it’s still hard to go past a sustainable, functional and liveable house in a desirable location – especially when it’s your first family home.
View more houses and buildings with green rooftops, along with some advice from Fuscaldo on installing a green rooftop.
So after some preliminary research and discussions with the engineer, the green roof got the green light. “Our house is an example of how to realise a smallish house with a good-sized yard (that fits a dog and a cat) and is close to the city,” says Fuscaldo. You could say other homebuyers on a budget might be green with envy!
Coburg is a suburb just seven kilometres from Melbourne’s CBD, with lots of detached single-family homes on large plots.