Sustainable Habitat Challenge - Building a Better Way

Welcome

The Sustainable Habitat Challenge - a network of people designing and building more sustainable buildings and neighbourhoods.

Affordable, delightful housing, micro architecture, prefabricated housing, and more...

Living with purpose, living well with less reliance on resources.

Please call or email me at any time tim@shac.org.nz or 0800 762 786.

Events

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Join SHAC

This week SHAC is building a small 10m2 office for Gap Filler in Christchurch. 21-28th of January, 2012. Call me if you would like to volunteer - 021 705 346.

The office is made from mostly recycled materials from demolished Christchurch buildings. How can we live well with less reliance on resources? Using recycled building materials is one good strategy.

Press Article. Our blog.

Call me and join in! Or just stop by at the site, and take a ride on our electric bicycle.

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The SHAC aim is efficient, affordable, adaptable, durable, simple, healthy, and delightful buildings and neighbourhoods with focus on regenerative communities. Lets work on this together and pass on our skills to young people.

SHAC helps us collaborative, involve and pass along skills to young people, and publish our designs and techniques. Together we are building our future. Join in!

SHAC Awards for 2011 have been announced!:

Commercialisation - Ben and Chris from SPACE MoveableRooms.co.nz
Practical Innovation - Mark Fielding from Ecotect
Design - Andrew Just from CPIT and F3 Design
Pushing the Boundaries - Bomun Bock-Chung from Awhi Farms
Youth Participation and Supreme Awards -Tom Malpass, Carpentry Tutor, Wintec. Video of student introductions.

See the presentations from our recent Symposium on Micro-Architecture and Simple Building

Forum

Christchurch, sustainable new project - interested?

Started by Jane Pearce. Last reply by Naomi Smith Jan 9. 4 Replies 0 Likes

My partner and I are interested in building a sustainable home in Christchurch. We would like to at least meet, or team up (possibly even to form a community project) with people to share…Continue

Building concept for sustainable house on a ridge

Started by Mark Wren. Last reply by Richard Neill Sep 23, 2010. 3 Replies 0 Likes

The point of difference for this building design is to incorporate integrated energy and water-use systems to maximise the efficient use of resources and minimise the impact on community and grid…Continue

Funding advice for teams

Started by Tim Bishop. Last reply by Alex Jan 19. 1 Reply 0 Likes

Some tertiary teams have their building process funded by their polytechnic. Private teams generally have a private client. Community teams making displays and community halls are likely to need to…Continue

What's your general design advice for teams?

Started by Tim Bishop. Last reply by Tim Bishop May 26, 2010. 3 Replies 0 Likes

Post here your general design advice for teams.

Retrofit Transportable Office Block [Dunedin]

Started by Tim Bishop May 20, 2010. 0 Replies 0 Likes

The Otago Polytechnic is retrofitting a small office block for SHAC 2011.The renovated offices in B Block will be a delightful and long lasting work environment, with some nice visual and technical…Continue

Classroom New Build [Southland]

Started by Tim Bishop May 20, 2010. 0 Replies 0 Likes

In 2008 a series of Sustainable Living workshops took place, set up by Invercargill City Council, Environment Southland and Southland Education. Topics included No Weeds in the Vege Patch, Solar…Continue

School Transportable Classroom retrofit [Manukau Institute of Technology]

Started by Tim Bishop. Last reply by Werner Eisenhauer Aug 10, 2010. 4 Replies 0 Likes

Manukau Institute of Technologyis proposing to develop a high performance classroom retrofit. How can transportable classrooms be retrofitted to create a classroom that stays cool in the summer, and…Continue

Your Visions for Sustainable Building

Started by Tim Bishop. Last reply by Alex Jan 19. 1 Reply 0 Likes

Post here a description of your vision for your more sustainable building and neighbourhood.Continue

OPINION: How to improve Christchurch land planning processes

Major [Christchurch] unnecessary poor quality urban governance and planning costs can in large measure be attributed to:

(a) Strangling land supply at the fringes, driving fringe serviced residential section / lots costs up from approximately $30 - $60,000 to $200 - $300,000 and beyond, which in turn ripples through land values within the rest of the urban area.

(b) Inappropriately financing infrastructure required for new development, loading the capital costs (with subdivision and builders margins) in to the house purchaser, then forcing them to “gift” this infrastructure to the utility providers.

(c) Poor planning degrading the performance of the residential construction sector, so that construction costs on a per metre basis are currently double what they should be. This “degradation” and the downstream degradation ( e.g. leaky homes, finance companies going to the wall, cowboy construction culture etc) were covered within an earlier article by the writer - Houston, we have a (housing affordability) problem | interest.co.nz.

Cheap wall insulation using polystyrene beads

Cheap wall insulation with polystyrene beads and a hair dryer How to insulate into your walls for under US$300 (NZ$400).

Property speculation has led to edge of a precipice | Otago Daily Times Online News Keep Up to Date Local, National New Zealand & International News

Individuals can get rich by buying and selling houses but a country cannot.

This is the problem that we are now slowly starting to recognise.

Opinion: Respecting the Median Multiple housing measure | interest.co.nz

Developers actually build cities – urban experts don’t. There are the “doers” in this world and the “dreamers”.