3 Best Examples of Sustainable House Designs

The first step to building your dream home is getting a good house design created by one of the topnotch architects in the Philippines. But how do we know a house design is good? Moore Design & Draughting gave some pointers and the one that stands out the most is it must be able to save money by providing a home that is energy efficient and maintenance-friendly.

One of the ways to have an energy efficient and maintenance-friendly home is adapting the principles of sustainable housing. Positive Footprints defines it as a house “that makes effective use of resources and energy flows available to the site.” An example of this is it harnesses solar power to produce electricity by using solar panels placed on top of roofs. Or it collects rainwater to water the garden. Nothing is wasted.

You can draw inspirations from the samples below to design a sustainable house in the Philippines:

Fall House (Big Sur, California, US)

Source: fougeron.com

This two-story house which is designed and built by San Francisco’s Fougeron Architecture has seven sustainable design features according to Arch Daily website:

Natural daylight in all rooms
Low E, solar control glazing on the steel frame
Radiant hydronic heat systems
Stack ventilation
Drought resistant and native vegetation
On-site wastewater treatment
Low VOC paint

ZEB Pilot House (Larvik, Norway)

Source: snohetta.com

This was a joint project of architectural firm Snøhetta and Norway’s Research Center on Zero Emission Buildings (ZEB). New Atlas says ZEB Pilot House can “generate almost three times the amount of electricity it requires.” How? The roof has a 150 sq. m photovoltaic array and a 16 sq. m solar thermal panel array.

Slip House (Brixton, South London)

Source: newatlas.com

At first glance, you might assume this is only a stack of container vans but this project of Carl Turner Architects (CTA) is an actual house which is sustainable to boot. Its features are “solar thermal panels; wildflower roof; rainwater harvesting for gardening, washing clothes and WCs,” CTA’s official website describes.

The typical features of a house design in the Philippines are the number of floors, rooms or bathrooms. Now you can level it up and discuss with your architect how it can be made sustainable. Investing in a sustainable house is quite expensive, but you will be able to save a hefty sum of money in the long run because it can generate resources like electricity and water on its own.