H (heath) House

Located on the bushfire prone biodiverse landscape of Point Henry, Western Australia, and televised on ABC New Inventors and SBS Insight - the H House presents a model for reconciling bushfire and biodiversity with daily life.

The house was developed using a ‘ground up’ approach which followed a detailed topographical survey (by Dr Weir) and collaborations with a local botanists and a bushfire risk consultant to ascertain the level of threat that fire presented to this particular site. The intention from the outset however, was not to design a bushfire resistant house per se, but to develop a design which would place the owners in close proximity to the highly biodiverse heath vegetation of the site.

Bushfire awareness is embedded into daily life through the dual purposing of fire shutters to also control sun, insects and glare. In this way not only are costs minimised, but the resident’s behaviour in emergencies is directly aligned with their daily patterns of habitation.