small house
design 2010?

we have an interesting quantity surveyor, steve grimes of plan cost Australia.
every year steve sends us a Christmas card with a nice thought provoking poem, the cards are all commissioned directly from the city of the child which they sponsor, and every year steve attaches a vial containing something collected from their travels that year.
this year the vial contained muddy water from lake eyre, as the rain from up north had created a steady flow into the massive inland basin eventually meeting up with the grimes family and their collection of vials.
next year we believe steve is planning to visit a pharmaceutical company so we wait expectantly for next years card and vial.

steve and his family have strong social ethics.
as such he and his son aquired a parcel of land in diamond creek, a wooded outer suburb to melbournes n/n.e.
although diamond creek is a growth corridor it lacks infastructure with little to no public transport and few local amenities, which is a severe impedment to its largely low socio-ecenomic population, who become car dependent for shopping, work, day care etc.
having purchased an average sized sloping block, with an existing 1960’s single storey residence to the street front of the block, the intention was to build a simple, cost effective [ to build and to live in], robust, intelligently designed passive solar house that could be rented out at affordable rates to a needy low income family, to the back portion of the block.
a duel occupancy, which was a common occurance in diamond creek.
the department of social housing on a very personal scale.
the build budget was $ 100,000.
now if we had approached our q.s wanting to build a new residence for $ 100,000 steve would have told us we were dreaming. but as the boot was on the other foot, he deemed all was achievable given the right minded builder…..and who are we to argue with our quantity surveyor?

our aim was to not only achieve our clients brief but to also produce a building with a simple yet eloquent form.
the proposal was for an elongated building than stepped down with the site slope so to achieve maximum north facing exposure.
screening devices were designed in to deal with the overlooking issues that are prevelant with projects of this nature.

project design team
tim o’sullivan architect
sioux clark interior designer

photographs
multiplicity