Bricolage

National Winner of the True Zero Carbon Challenge 2024
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Design Matters National:
In a groundbreaking achievement for sustainable architecture, a conceptual design for a Spring Bay, Tasmania residence called "Bricolage" has been crowned the winner of Design Matters National's True Zero Carbon Challenge 2024. The winning design, a collaboration between architect Uta Green of Green Design Architects and energy efficiency assessor Rebecca Boyle from Aspire Sustainability, demonstrates how innovative thinking and creative material use can transform residential construction's environmental impact, while still achieving a beautiful and comfortable home that will sustain occupants well into the future.

Revolutionary recycling in construction

The winning design's most striking innovation lies in its use of post construction waste for cladding. A 'Bricolage' is an 'artwork that has been constructed from random materials that happen to be available'. Bricolage house is clad in large format shingles cut out from waste construction materials, such as fibre cement, ply and metal. The use of recycled materials as cladding reduced the embodied carbon of the design significantly as well as resulting in a striking and playful exterior, demonstrating the joy of recycling.

A unique approach to thermal mass was also integrated in the design: water-filled recycled glass bottles placed into key internal stud walls. This ingenious solution delivers a lightweight stud wall with thermal capacity comparable to a traditional clay brick construction without the embodied carbon as well as repurposing waste materials.

Finally, the design incorporated two prefabricated sections, stacked on top of each other, which can be demounted and re-used in various configurations in a new location, in the future.

Setting new standards in sustainable performance

The two-storey residence achieves remarkable energy efficiency metrics:

- A stellar 9.2 NatHERS star rating

- An exceptional Whole of Home performance rating of 124 out of 100 (carbon positive)

- A modest embodied carbon footprint of 147.2 tonnes CO₂ (0.8 tonne/m²)

- Projected to achieve true carbon zero status by 2042