My Ideal House by Mirvac

In 2016 Australian House & Garden Magazine and Mirvac Design launched a competition to design the ideal family home, one that responded to the challenges of modern life delivering sustainability, flexibility and liveability to promote a better way of living. With shrinking lot sizes, the rise in multigenerational households, changing work patterns and lifestyles, affordability and sustainability all concerns, the time was right for a new approach to housing design. The challenge was to create a home that met the needs of its occupants throughout multiple life stages, preferring good design over size, while also creating connections to the broader community.

The winning design, by Sydney architect Madeleine Blanchfield (design development by Mirvac Design), achieves the design pillars of sustainability, liveability and flexibility. It can easily adapt to the changing lifestyles and life stages of its occupants with a multi-purpose front room that allows it to be a three, four or five-bedroom home. The passive solar home encourages healthy indoor-outdoor living with a north-facing wall of sliding glass doors and a long expanse of lawn. The modular design allows the home to be easily adapted to different sites and orientations so that living areas enjoy northern sunlight.

The design not only promotes easy interaction between the occupants but greater connection to the broader resident community with its street-facing window seat providing a space for the occupant to engage with the streetscape. Principles of the design have been incorporated into new home designs within the Mirvac Design portfolio, so that the benefits of its flexible and sustainable design are enjoyed by more than a single family. Importantly My Ideal House proves that comfortable living, that enables a happy and healthy indoor-outdoor lifestyle accommodating the whole of life needs of a family, is not about size but good design.

My Ideal House is not a large home, offering 230sqm of living area on a 416sqm block of land. It is an intelligent response to diminishing lot sizes, providing three bedrooms, 2 ½ bathrooms, double garage, ample indoor living space and functional outdoor space for both adults and children, with the added benefit of a flexible multi-purpose room. This flexible room can serve as second living space, a home office, guest accommodation or reconfigured to form two rooms, to become a three, four or five bedroom home (refer to Mirvac Designs' Landon Series). The home is polite towards its neighbours, the single storey rear living pavilion respectful of privacy and avoiding overshadowing. The design encourages a healthy indoor-outdoor lifestyle with a north-facing wall of sliding glass doors allowing easy interaction for a typical family scenario – a parent preparing dinner with children playing outdoors within sight and sound. My Ideal House is a solar passive home, with north-facing living areas, sun-shading, cross ventilation, solar access and heat sinks. Where rooms face west, overhangs are increased and on the south wall glazing is minimised. Solar PV panels and a Tesla Powerwall 2 solar battery are expected to deliver significant energy bill savings.