Hickinbotham news

On its corner allotment in the Salisbury mortgage belt, the bare bones of the house are hard to miss in a streetscape of brick-and tile boxes. The timbers of the skillion roof thrust skywards, creating deep eaves over the north-facing wall of glass doors. The doors enclose the open plan kitchen and living space, and give on to a generously proportioned courtyard. On its western side, bedroom windows overlook what will one day be a leafy, shaded space in summer, and in winter a sunny space that reflects its warmth into the entire house. The eastern side is enclosed by the garage wall.

This is the first prototype of the Max Pritchard-designed range of sustainable houses being offered by South Australian builder Hickinbotham in its Affordable Architect Series. As reported in The Advertiser Review in February, Pritchard partnered with Hickinbotham to realise a long-held dream to create affordable housing that was well designed and eco-friendly.

While most architect-designed houses are one-offs for the upper end of the housing market, those in the Affordable Architect Series are costed as low as $62,900.

This price, for a two-bedroom, one bathroom villa, is considerably less than the $74,600 price tag on the cheapest house in the present Hickinbotham range, thanks to economies of scale and their expertise in the so-called ‘‘volume’’ market. What makes Pritchard’s range so special is the fact that, unlike the cookie-cutter houses usually offered in the volume market, there are 26 designs, allowing houses of varying sizes to be positioned according to the size and orientation of the block.

Hickinbotham originally asked Pritchard to come up with about five designs to suit standard subdivision block sizes: villa allotments of 10m x 30m (300m2), courtyard blocks of 15m x 30m (450m2) and family home allotments of 18m x 30m (540m2) and 20m x 30m (600m2).

Setting out with a core design principle of providing each house with an open-plan living area, with about 9m of north-facing glass doors and windows opening on to an outdoor area, Pritchard quickly found that five designs would fall well short.

‘‘I felt if we could get the living areas of the homes working well, family-efficient and relating to an outdoor space, that was the primary requirement,’’ he says. ‘‘That’s what I felt wasn’t being satisfied with the present range of homes in the market. They’re not designed for any particular orientation and they’re not designed to relate well to any particular outdoor area.’’

Add to that the trend for larger houses and smaller blocks, and the result is usually a large box in the centre of a block. ‘‘You don’t finish up with any usable space relating to that indoor living area,’’ Pritchard says.

Even on the most basic design, Pritchard regarded the north-facing living space and courtyard as his starting point.

‘‘That way, you get the maximum amount of winter sun, minimising the amount of heating you need, and it’s easy to shade north facing windows in the summer,’’ he says. ‘‘So that’s why I had to come up with a lot more than five designs.’’

Like all new houses, these designs comply with the mandatory five-star energy rating, but the passive solar heating and summer cooling provided by northern orientation and indoor-outdoor living spaces make them considerably more sustainable than houses that might achieve even higher energy ratings.

‘‘It’s easy to achieve five stars,’’ Pritchard says. ‘‘You just have to have small windows and put a bit more insulation in but, to me, that doesn’t make good design. It’s not just achieving energy ratings; it’s getting a house that’s encouraging that relationship to the outdoors, to get you out there to have your barbecue, to have the kids playing outside, rather than sitting in a sealed environment with the air conditioner on.’’

The key to achieving the passive heating and cooling effects of the designs lies in the landscaping of the outdoor space.

‘‘They don’t work unless you get shade,’’ Pritchard says. ‘‘You can do it with deciduous trees, pergolas with deciduous vines or adjustable louvres.’’

Pergolas will not be included in the base price, but are among add-on options, he says: ‘‘But a pergola doesn’t cost much.’’

Ruth Vagnarelli, design director at the Hickinbotham Group, says the company has responded to a call from the State Government to provide more innovative housing in the low-cost market. ‘‘What we like about Max is that he is so passionate about affordable housing,’’ Vagnarelli says. ‘‘He’s a high-end architect traditionally but he’s passionate about trying to give people another choice in the affordable market.’’

The Salisbury display house has been built in partnership with the South Australian Housing Trust, and is scheduled to open in March. Site works for a second Pritchard designed display house have begun at Hickinbotham’s Coast estate at Seaford Rise, with a completion date set for about April next year.

The company also commissioned Pritchard to design seven attached villas that are both affordable and sustainable for developer Canberra Investment Corporation. For his part, Pritchard is delighted that Hickinbotham has been so firm in its commitment to keep the designs in the affordable bracket.

‘‘It’s far exceeded my expectations, that Hickinbotham would commit to so many designs,’’ he says. ‘‘I thought at the start that they might be marketing these at the more informed customers who knew a bit about sustainability and energy performance and were prepared to pay a bit more but, no, they wanted these to satisfy that, as well as being right down there with their cheapest product.

‘‘So that really pleased me, that they weren’t seeing this as a slightly elite thing. It’s not at all.’’