House that costs $280,000 wins My Ideal House design competition

What does the perfect affordable, good-looking, liveable, sustainable house look like?

Ask architect Madeleine Blanchfield. Her vision, which will cost just $280,000 to build, has today won the inaugural My Ideal House design competition held by Australian House & Garden magazine, together with developers Mirvac.   

“I think there should be good design principles involved in creating any home, like its attention to orientation, without it necessarily having to cost a fortune,” says Ms Blanchfield, 39, who usually spends all her time on high end, one-off homes that cost 10 times as much.  

“We came up with something that’s quite simple but modular, and which is flexible so its modules can be attached differently to adapt it to different sites. And it has the same kind of design principles you’d find in an expensive house on Palm Beach, with good ceiling heights, finishes, and outdoor space.”

That ideal house is now to go from dream to reality – about to be built in south west Sydney at the Camden master-planned community Crest by Mirvac at Gledswood Hills, with profits from the sale going to charity. The land cost is likely to be around $365,000.

The competition, with more than 80 entries, was the brainchild of Australian House & Garden magazine editor-in-chief Lisa Green, whose father sold project homes and who grew up in a number of architect-designed project homes produced by legendary builders Pettit+Sevitt. Those houses, built mostly between 1962 and 1977 on Sydney’s North Shore, are now treasured.

“Those built in Sydney, as well as others built in Victoria, are now part of a really rich Australian heritage,” says Ms Green. “So I thought it was time now to be thinking about housing again and what sort of housing is going up, and reignite the passion for good design, and happily Mirvac was there to back the idea.

“It was pretty amazing to see all the designs that came in, there’s so much talent out there, and it is great to see that affordable housing doesn’t mean they have to go without good design.

“It was the perfect opportunity to have an impact on mass housing, and Madeleine’s design ticked all the boxes. It embraces passive design principles, reducing the need for artificial cooling and heating, sits small on the block, leaving room for a garden and play space, and offers great flexibility – interchangeable spaces to adapt to a family’s changing needs over time.”

The winning design has a street-friendly two-storey frontage to the street and bedrooms on the upper level, while the living areas are in a single-storey pavilion connected to outdoor space.

With the modular form that can be adapted four ways depending on site orientation, this means living areas enjoy northern light, privacy is maintained and there is no overshadowing of neighbouring homes. There’s also a windowbox add on to increase the community feel of the house.

Mirvac general manager design, sales and marketing Diana Sarcasmo​ says that future home-buyers would be sure to love the ideal house design too.

“This is a home we feel confident our customers would love to live in,” she says. “It offers everything that we know families value in a home. Its cleverness lies in its modular form which can be adapted for a number of different sites and orientations.”

Ms Blanchfield, who has her own award-winning architectural studio in Paddington which she set up after 10 years as an associate director of BKH, won $25,000 for her design. It was when she was suffering a recent bout of meningitis and feeling like death, she says, that she decided to enter the competition for a good design with a $900-$1100 square metre build cost at the last minute.

“The forms were sitting on my desk and, although we had a lot of work on and no free time, I thought I would like to do something positive for the wider community,” she says.

“I’ve always wanted to contribute to housing, other than in the one-offs we do which I also love, and to be able to do this in collaboration with someone like Mirvac who are very good, is just fantastic.”