Bravo High Performance House

“A natural light-filled home that is very functional and warm, inviting — not sterile — would make us feel most proud." That's how the clients described their brief for Brave House, a single-storey family home in Fairfield, in Melbourne's Inner North.

The brief was modest by design: three bedrooms, no more space than the family actually needed, but built to flex as their life changes. Every room had to earn its place, and it had to feel warm rather than clinical — open enough for a busy, active household, with quieter, semi-secluded corners for reading and play tucked around a central living hub. The block's orientation worked against easy sunlight, so the design leans on where the building sits rather than fighting it: its bulk is pushed toward the south boundary, freeing up a north-facing courtyard and light-filled living space at the centre of the plan. At the rear, a skillion-roofed pavilion opens toward the neighbouring park, borrowing its outlook and its northern light.

Architecturally, Brave House takes its cues from the Californian Bungalows along the street, reworked into something more contemporary — a double-fronted gable facade at the front giving way to that skillion pavilion behind it.

Inside, a restrained palette lets texture do the talking: movement in the floorboards, a contrast of gloss and matte white tiles, and varied timber batten profiles, all set against a warm, neutral background built for depth and shadow rather than decoration.

On performance, the home was built with high-quality windows and doors, deeper wall frames for extra insulation, and mechanical heat recovery ventilation for fresh air year-round without losing heat through open windows. It achieved a 7.9-star energy rating — comfortably above Victoria's 7-star minimum for new homes — with a modelled carbon footprint of around 3.34 tonnes of CO2 a year, against roughly 17 tonnes for an average Australian home.

Completed in 2024, the 190m² home in Fairfield was built by Hazelwood Homes.