Going green: Sustainable Burradoo home stands out from the crowd in Southern Highlands

Think of a home in the Southern Highlands of NSW and one typically conjures up the idea of a historic or traditional abode which nestles into its green hills and cold-climate gardens.

However, what is on offer in the home that Alice Martin designed for her family – husband Hamish Diver, three daughters Imogen, 12, Clare, 10, and Emilia, 7, and seven-year-old cavoodle Silvie – is really quite different.

“The house isn’t normal looking,” Martin says of the contemporary, four-bedroom, silvertop ash-clad home which sits on 0.2 hectares in the prime Highlands location of Burradoo. “It’s born out of the process.”

That process started when the family moved from Sydney’s Darling Point to the Southern Highlands town in 2015.

“We were living in Darling Point in a heritage-listed home that we had renovated, however I had a sense of emptiness and that I wasn’t living my true values,” says Martin.

Transferring to the area a 90-minute drive from Sydney, Martin and her family first rented a Federation home in Bowral, before buying a challenging block in Burradoo.

Martin – who now runs her own home design business, STUDIOAM – says the final design was born from the complexities of the site and a desire to create a home that worked for family living and was suited to cooler climes.

“I wanted to be able to see the [family] but not necessarily hear them,” she says. “I also wanted an open-plan design but wanted to be able to have the kitchen concealed from guests.”

The solution is a floor plan that has clear sight lines from the kitchen, living and dining area but also has an enclosed deck that provides a buffer between the different zones.

The TV room, meanwhile, sits separately on the third side of the deck and can be closed off completely from the other ground-floor living zones.

“In the highlands a home also needs a sense of intimacy and that’s what this area does,” Martin says.

Likewise, the three bedrooms on the ground floor are positioned away from the main living area. The master bedroom is on the first floor, along with an en suite, a home office and a hallway that provides a transition from the public areas of the house to the private zones.

A key factor in the design was to create a home that could be kept warm in an area that can require heating almost year-round.

“Our heritage-listed house  in Sydney was beautiful but functionally hopeless,” Martin says. “Then, when we first came here, we rented a Californian bungalow in Bowral and discovered how cold it can be.”

Today the home is a pleasant 19 degrees to 20 degrees year-round due to a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system, windows which are triple-glazed and have tilt-and-turn opening for airtight thermal efficiency, thermal mass-efficient concrete floors and a design that encourages cross ventilation.

The garden also contributes to making the home energy efficient and sustainable. Deciduous trees stand on the west-facing side of the home, while drought-tolerant species dominate the surrounding landscape.

Inside, the home is functional and modern but does not compromise on quality and comfort.

Having previously lived in an older home, Martin says she wanted the design to have the weight of age that old homes have – “that sense of groundness”.

That comes through in the use of robust materials that proudly display their history.

“We used recycled bricks inside, and I wanted the ones with the biggest holes and the most texture, which is something the builder did not understand initially,” Martin says. “However, I love the mix of the old and the new.”

The family are moving as they eye their next project and Martin continues to build her business.

Listing agent Corina Nesci of Drew Lindsay Real Estate says while the home is energy efficient it does not compromise on quality, guiding the home at $3.6 million.

She says the property is coming onto the market at a time when the profile of buyers in the area has significantly changed.

While the area has long been popular as a second-home location for Sydneysiders, today there is further interest in permanent homes, including among expats looking for space and a community with good schools.

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48C Burradoo Road, Burradoo NSW 2576

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