Olinda House in Melbourne, Victoria Building, Melbourne Real Estate Project, Architecture Images
Olinda House in Melbourne
23 Feb 2020
Olinda House
Architects: BENT Architecture
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Olinda House is the result of a love story between the owners and their site. Designed for vets and keen gardeners, Matt and Leanne, the home brings the outdoors in and means their daily lives are immersed in greenery. We worked with Matt on his previous house, so when the couple decided on a tree change in the stunning Dandenong Ranges, they asked us to design a home to embrace the landscape with a focus on sustainability.

The leafy surrounds means the site has a moderate bushfire risk with a BAL-29 rating. In order to meet these building regulations and keep the home safe from bushfire, the design and material selection was an important consideration. To help achieve this rating, the home is built on a solid podium of concrete and blockwork: not your typical blockwork, though! Timbercrete, a lightweight, sustainable building block fabricated with waste timber content offers a unique and eco-friendly alternative. The use of concrete and blockwork offers a double benefit; their solidity and thermal mass helps to maintain an even temperature inside the home, enhancing the effectiveness of the passive solar design. With hydronic heating throughout, typically in the concrete slab, even the coolest winter’s morning is cosy underfoot.
A split-level desi...