The Bungalow

The Hundred Year Bungalow — a 1928 bungalow, rebuilt for the next hundred years.

A house with a story. Built in 1928, it turns 100 in two years. The Californian bungalow is one of the great Australian house types, and this one still reads like the day it was built — same roofline, same verandah, same pillars, much of the same floor plan. New materials, old soul.

We didn't send it to landfill. The easy option was a bulldozer, a skip bin and a beige box. Keeping the house was harder, cost more and took longer. It's also the reason the street still looks like the street.

Built the way houses used to be built — and then some. Certified Passivhaus, tested rather than assumed. Every joint sealed and pressure-tested, every system commissioned, right down to the footings. This isn't "meets code". Code is the worst house you're legally allowed to build.

A house you can trust. Most new homes are signed off on paperwork. This one was measured, independently assessed and certified by a third party. If it isn't right, it doesn't pass.

We'll publish the numbers. Bills, comfort data, what it cost to build. Plenty of houses claim to be green. This one shows its working, and you can judge it yourself.

Healthy by design. Filtered fresh air, 24 hours a day. The envelope is built to design out damp, condensation and mould rather than manage them after the fact. Steady temperature in every room, every season — no cold corners, no stuffy bedrooms.

Quiet. Sealed and triple-glazed. You don't hear the street, the neighbours, or the wind. Unless ofcourse you want to open the windows and sliding doors which you certainly can.

Light, garden, birds. Daylight in every room, an indigenous garden growing in around the house, and water and places to connect to nature. The native birds and insects have already found it.

Almost no energy bills. Heating and cooling barely run. Hot water, cooking, heating, cooling are all efficient electric systems, powered by a big rooftop solar array and a battery. Surplus power charges the car — so if you own an electric or hybrid-electric car, there's no petrol bill either.

Comfortable when the grid isn't. Heatwave, storm, blackout: a house this well insulated and sealed stays liveable for days, with the battery keeping the fridge running and the lights on.

Future-proofed. Energy prices go up, summers get hotter, building codes get tighter. This house was built for all three. Whatever the rules are in 2040, it already meets them.

Built responsibly, not just efficiently. Near-zero waste to landfill, low-carbon concrete, healthy materials, and zero carbon in operation. The emissions are dealt with at both ends — building it and living in it.

Nothing here is exotic. No unprooven technology, no science experiment, no budget most people don't have. It's a normal bungalow on a normal block, and almost every choice we made is available to just about any family home in Melbourne, whether it be a new construction or deep retrofit. That's the point of the project — not to show off one house, but to show what's already possible for all of them.