When it comes to building homes that can handle Australia’s increasingly wild weather, tradies and homeowners alike know it’s no easy feat.
Whether it’s cyclones, storms, floods, or bushfires, the challenge of safeguarding homes against nature’s fury can leave even the most experienced builders scratching their hard hats.
But building or renovating a home that can withstand Mother Nature’s wrath no longer needs to feel harder than laying a slab during a monsoon.
A new digital toolkit by internationally renowned architect Carol Marra has handed homebuilders and DIY lovers the blueprints to design a climate-resilient home in time for storm season.
Helping homebuilders weather the storm
Titled Design for Climate, Design for Change, the free online guide is a game-changer for anyone looking to safeguard their home against extreme weather events.
Packed with insights, case studies, and cutting-edge climate-responsive strategies, the guide is designed to empower homeowners to enhance comfort and privacy to ensure durability during wilder weather.
It blends practicality with inspiration. Clear diagrams and photography make even the most complex concepts easy to grasp.
Director of the award-winning Marra+Yeh Architects Carol Marra says the e-book is built upon the foundations of two decades of experience designing and constructing climate-resilient homes across Australia and the world.
“I created this toolkit to fill what I saw as a gap in the current literature available for homeowners,” she told Build-it.
“Readers can access highly practical yet strategic steps to help fortify their homes against a range of extreme weather events.”
Calling on First Nations principles, the guide is packed with diagrams, drawings, and photography that help convey key concepts of climate-responsive design to enhance comfort, privacy, and liveability with a particular focus on homes in various Aussie environments.
One of those areas is the bushfire-prone Blue Mountains in Sydney, where Marra designed her own climate-resilient home.
The bushfire resilient house in Leura incorporates sustainable architecture principles and is positioned to maximise protection from prevailing winds and to create defensible spaces during a bushfire event.
“The house performs on so many levels — it’s warm and cozy in winter, cool and breezy in summer, bright on a cloudy day, and high and dry during the big storms,” says Marra.
Design for Climate, Design for Change is available online for free, making it a must-have for anyone wanting to ensure their home is ready to withstand whatever nature throws its way.
