Design Philosophy
The Northcote Flexible House is an exciting and sustainable alternative to the traditional family home. It contains spaces with high flexibility and smart use of volume, allowing the rooms to perform many functions. Making it a smaller house, it required fewer materials to build and uses less energy to heat than the typical family home. The flexibility of space combined with natural light make this house a dynamic place to live.The family room opens to the living room and can be divided by sliding walls, allowing it to perform as a guest bedroom, or evolve into other uses such as a rumpus room or a study as the family grows. Space-saving mezzanines maximise the use of volumes. North-oriented glazing provides passive heating. Placement of doors and windows to best capture natural ventilation provides passive cooling. The ability to close off the flexible spaces allows efficient heating of only the rooms that are being used.
