Urban Utilities | GHD Design
The head office fit out for Urban Utilities in the new Lumina building in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, embraces today’s hybrid environment and expresses the water company’s purpose of enriching the quality of life. Its progressive design supports business activities to occur in a way that best suits each individual or group activity and ultimately seeks to lift creativity, productivity and customer satisfaction.
As home to one of the largest water distributor retailers in Australia supplying drinking water, recycled water and sewerage services, Urban Utilities’ workplace is highly sustainable, flexible and technology enabled.
Dachshund House | Maxwell & Page
Dachshund House represented a paradigm shift for our clients as they sought to establish a sustainable, cost efficient, adaptable and joyful family home within a sea of brick and tile semirural suburbia just outside of Tamworth, northwestern NSW.
A deep discussion about what makes a house sustainable (and an early neighbouring precedent otherwise) has generated a locally unique suburban courtyard form that reflects our client’s values and provides a seasonally adaptive cradle for their growing family.
The programme of the house twists around a Coral Bark Maple (Acer Palmatum Sango kaku) and fountained pond providing a private, cool, shaded focal point within the semiarid suburban landscape. Every habitable space is oriented to north with generous eaves to manage light and heat.
A muted material palette of greys, browns and greens evokes remnant eucalyptus forests and the burgeoning native garden surrounding the home and repairing the degraded ecology of the site.