Forrest Passive House

What began in 2019 as an alterations and additions project ultimately evolved into a completely new home in Spotswood, in Melbourne's Inner West — and one of our first Passive Houses to pursue certification.

During the Black Summer bushfires, over the Christmas period, smoke blanketed Melbourne for weeks. At the time, we had air-quality monitors installed in the existing home to track temperature and humidity performance. Unexpectedly, they also picked up particulate matter (PM) — and on one especially smoky morning, PM levels spiked dramatically. The message was clear: thermal upgrades could make the house warmer, but they couldn't make the air clean enough, not for a family with a child with heightened respiratory sensitivities.

Renovations, even good ones, are a series of compromises. Combined with rising construction costs, that reality led the client to ask a bigger question: what would a new build look like instead?

We introduced them to the Possum House prototype from our AlterecO2 range. That conversation was the turning point — it became the first AlterecO2 home ever built.

From there, we began modelling the design in PHPP (the Passive House Planning Package) and worked closely with a Passive House certifier for the first time, setting the foundation for what would become a defining project for our practice.

Completed in 2021, the 180m² home (plus carport) achieved Passive House Classic certification with an airtightness result of 0.4 air changes per hour — comfortably under the Passive House benchmark of 0.6. Last we checked in with the family, their child hadn't had a single respiratory episode since moving in.