"I wouldn't call myself an ardent environmentalist or anything," says Green Modern author, Claire McCall. "But the point I wanted to make with the book was that green houses are always thought of as mud huts, or have that kind of hippy thing about them. But they don't have to be. There are so many ways to be green. And you don't have to be 100 per cent green ... "
It is, of course, important that we take sustainability more seriously in our buildings. According to McCall, the Building Research Association of New Zealand apparently calls construction the "40 per cent business": our buildings consume 40 per cent of our raw materials, they eat up to 40 per cent of our energy and they generate 40 per cent of our waste. As well, a third of all our carbon dioxide emissions come from constructing, running and demolishing our buildings.
However, McCall says, in striving to be more green, more sustainable, more thoughtful about the future when we build new houses or renovate old ones, we should also aim for something that is "spiritually enriching" too. Green design shouldn't be a compromise, but instead must part of the fabric of a great architecture.
Below, The First Light House placed third overall in the 2011 US
Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. Photo / Paul McCredie
The key question of course is: what makes a home green? The answer, it seems, is it depends.
"I could have put 30 houses in and they could all have been off-the-grid baches," McCalls says. "That is mainly what comes up instantly if you speak to people about what sustainable or green things they are doing. 'Oh I've got a bach in so and so and it's got solar panels and water tanks ... ' All that sort of thing. But I wanted to showcase all different aspects. So there is the apartment designed by the young architectural graduate which she designed to take up dead space [space that might not otherwise have been used]. So that's a really urban context. It may not have solar panels or water tanks - and people say 'that's not green! It doesn't have solar panels' - but it is green because it is filling up what we call dead space in the city."
This Wellington home, dubbed a "city bach", was built on a tiny 6.5m by 7m footprint next to a three-lane bypass but manages to include a double garage, a one-bedroom home and a roof top deck for entertaining.
This bach at Blackpool, on Waiheke Island, was built nearly two decades after its owners purchased the steeply sloping property. Photo / Samuel Hartnett
A small infill home can be green then, even if it's not off-the-grid or has no special energy saving enhances. This is an example of how McCall, a former home and design magazine editor, found her views on sustainability changing as she researched her book.
"I was very much focused on the solar panel, energy-efficient house that was self-sufficient. I think self-sufficiency was my idea of green, that we have our own water, we have our own power, we heat our own water. That was my idea of green. But as soon as I got talking to people I realised that the idea of green is much broader than that."
The book certainly features homes with the expected trapping of green buildings such as those with photovoltaic panels to generate electricity, rainwater collection and onsite stormwater and effluent disposal. One, constructed from containers, is an example of the virtue of repurposing. However, sustainability is far more nuanced than this and can be extended to including financial and cultural considerations as well as directly environmental ideas like planting gardens which will attract bees.
This holiday home in Blind Bay on Great Barrier Island has spring-fed drinking water, a mini wastewater treatment plant and six solar panels as well as a wetback woodburner stove for cooking, water and space heating. Photo / Simon Wilson
One home in Green Modern, for example, incorporates a Maori perspective that a house should be part of its landscape and should be multigenerational.
"This is about trying to shape our thinking into being a bit more long term in terms of 'this isn't just my patch and my house and I'm going to live in it for seven years then flick it off'. It's trying to say that a house should be for you and for your family for generations and part of the wider community and if you did that you are probably much more likely to make decisions that are a bit more sustainable in the long term."
One home, dubbed "Black Hut", addresses what sustainability means in post-earthquake Christchurch: the house is all timber and designed to be flexible in a shake, has foundations raising the home 600mm off the ground to avoid the liquefaction zone and - in theory at least - is designed to be moved elsewhere if need be.
This bach at Blackpool on Waiheke Island has recycled tawa floors. Photo / Samuel Hartnett
The First Light House was stained with plant-based oils to protect the timber. Photo / Paul McCredie
A holiday home built at Blackpool on Waiheke offers another interesting spin on green principles - it's an example of what McCall calls financial sustainability. "[That story] is about 'yes, maybe you can have a bach, but you can't have it now - you shouldn't just put in on the mortgage. You wait and save."
The couple who built the Blackpool house bought the steeply sloping section in 1995 for just $14,000 then spent 15 years saving. It was finally designed in 2012 and was built with "modest" materials including a recycled tawa floor bought online and stored for some years in a garage.
Perhaps the most impressive repurposing story is the Muriwai home made from six 40-foot containers, bought for average price per container of just $2800, and turned into a elegant modern home.
The greenest house in the book is First Light, a holiday home perched overlooking Waimarama Beach in Hawkes Bay. It has a tiny footprint, a zero energy design, triple-glazed windows and a host of power, heating, cooling and energy monitoring technology. It was designed as New Zealand's entry to the 2011 US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon by a team of architecture students from Victoria University. It achieved third place in the overall competition.
But most importantly it manages to be beautiful inside and out.
"Green can be fashionable," McCall says. "Green can be good looking. Green doesn't have to be something ugly."
Five things to make your home greener without having to renovate
1. Every time an incandescent lightbulb blows replace it with an LED bulb. They cost a bit more, but they consume less power than standard bulbs and last more than 15 times as long.
2. Switch off the air-conditioning (or heatpump) in summer in favour of an energy-efficient ceiling fan.
3. Plant a single-flower species en masse to attract and feed bees.
4. Get a timer on your towel rail (a 100-watt rail running non-stop all year would cost around $220).
5. Lessen the load on landfills. Visit waterminz.org.nz to find out if there's something you can resourcefully recycle - from lightbulbs to batteries to whiteware.
Source: Green Modern by Claire McCall
Green Modern: Eco-Conscious Contemporary New Zealand Homes
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