Sustainability is an area of ever-increasing importance for almost all sectors of business, and the housing market is crucial to implementing solutions for day-to-day living. The concept and practice of Eco-friendly homes has been embraced by New Zealand homeowners and architectural designers, leading to homes that are not only eye catching, but blend well into the surrounding environments. Traditional materials such as wood are making a real comeback along with new environmentally sustainable products and technologies that offer architectural designers new challenges, and unique opportunities. Eco-friendly housing is being embraced around the globe, and New Zealand needs to part of the change.
How Sustainability Impacts Design
Naturally, as the overall focus of a home becomes centred on the sustainability and environmental friendliness of the build, the design itself tends to follow suit. One of the main reasons of course, is the nature of construction materials is greatly altered to more ecologically viable alternatives. This in itself presents some interesting opportunities for architectural designers, as balancing the use of appropriate materials without compromising the home owners preference for style and form can be an exciting prospect. Sustainable, energy efficient design is now such a main focus, that architectural designers are increasingly delivering unique and inspiring ways of incorporating these elements into any homes design, whether rural or urban. Perhaps, given the natural beauty of New Zealand as a whole, architectural designers have been quick to embrace the approaches of sustainability and eco-friendly solutions.
Sustainable Architecture and International Reach
The New Zealand Government has long been monitoring the effects and advantages of sustainability over a wide range of sectors, including housing. Thanks to such initiatives, the country now has a very diverse range of construction, design and housing providers that have fully embraced this approach. Internationally, there have been a number of countries that have followed suit, although more often than not implementations of fully sustainable design have been embraced by homeowners themselves, many designing and building their own homes on land they have purchased. In the UK for example, there is still ongoing debate about why such approaches have yet to be adopted by most mainstream housing builders and architectural firms. One such potential barrier to homeowners who have constructed housing out of non standard materials can be finding appropriate cover for their home. In the UK, timber is still counted as a non standard building material, which means that many eco-friendly designs cannot be covered by traditional home insurance. While there are a number of options for finding the right kind of solution here, this aspect remains one element in a number of other financial aspects that can make an eco-build very expensive, especially if entirely funded by the homeowners themselves. Despite this, a number of innovative builds have been completed, but there is frustration that such approaches aren’t being embraced as fully as they could be by construction firms and suppliers. In Germany however, due in part to certain environmentally focused regulation, and a growing amount of modular, eco-friendly housing suppliers, eco-housing is becoming an increasingly popular option.
Wider Implementation
It is certainly the case that sustainable builds can be achieved with a level of design and architecture that rivals older, more traditional approaches, and perhaps signifies and interesting shift in design focus for architecture in general. With a number of eco-focused suppliers, architectural designers now have much better access to the right materials for sustainable builds. Overall, this availability encourages creativity and innovation in design. While New Zealand is beginning to embrace sustainable and eco-friendly architecture on a wider scale, there is still a long way to go until such designs and approaches become the industry standard. Ultimately by embracing energy efficient, sustainable design, the housing stock in this country will perform better and cheaper, improving the health and comfort of people and preserving our precious resources.