"There's nothing sustainable about building a house," says Dan Heyworth. Photo / Ted Baghurst
Dan Heyworth remembers being approached by a client with spare cash who wanted to spend it on something that would his home more sustainable.
They looked at glazing, insulation, solar panels, water efficiency, all the usual tick-box items.
"We came to the conclusion that the best thing he could do was build a study so he could work from home two days a week, rather than burning down Highway 16 in his car," says Heyworth, who runs housing company Box Living.
"There's nothing sustainable about building a house."
That said, a lot can be done to reduce the impact of our homes on the planet and make them complement a low carbon lifestyle - as well as being pleasant places to live.
Box came out of Heyworth's earlier construction company, Arhaus, which he started with brother-in-law Nathan Holloway in response to what they saw as the low building quality and poor energy efficiency of much of New Zealand's housing stock.
After driving it as far as he could down the sustainability track, he decided instead to encourage people that there was value in good design.
"I'm a true believer of value architects can add to one's enjoyment of a house, everything from the health aspects to the value of the house," Heyworth says.
But working with architects usually means having up-front cash and deep pockets to cope with uncertainty. He describes Box as a step change in designing and building houses. The houses are designed on a grid in a modular fashion, with the aim of cutting as much waste out of the building process as possible.
A standardised set of details and components is used, reducing the architectural workload and speeding up the consent process. A post and beam system is used, with elements prefabricated off site.
Box favours wood rather than steel for building, and lamination technology means spans of six metres are no problem.
Construction can be done in stages, so an initial two bedroom home can become four as the family grows.
"People are getting the best of both worlds. They're getting the certainty of cost of the house company, because when we design we present people with the price up front, but they are also getting the architectural response to the site and their brief and their budget, and they are getting the services of an architect."
Box Living is a New Zealand Institute of Architects registered practice, employing architects and designers. It is also a licensed builder.
Box has designed 107 houses and is working through that building programme, with the business doubling each year. About half the jobs are urban homes, and half are baches. "This year we will build at least 35. Last year it was 20," he says.
What limits its growth is having enough architects and project mangers.
"We are a project management company essentially. In order to grow and service the regions, we need to look either at a franchise model or have partnerships.
"I would love to get the system to a stage where we can say to architects, 'here's a product you can offer to your clients.' That would be a good way to get the design out there," Heyworth says.
Box designs are influenced by mid-century modernism such as the Group Architects designs from New Zealand and the Case Study Houses promoted by Art and Architecture magazine in California.
"There was that post-war experimentation with new materials, steel, open spans. Architects came up with designs for more informal living that was more in line with the social norms of the time rather than everything being small, closed off rooms, and of course California is a relatively similar climate to here in terms of you can open the doors and reduce the boundary between indoors and outside," he says.
"Part of the sustainable thing is we believe houses are too big because they are designed badly and inefficiently. It's harder to design a small house. People are lazy, so if you can't design it well, design it big," he says.
"We reckon it is all about space and light and proportion."
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