Clients come to Uta Green, from Green Design Architects, for her speciality in sustainable buildings and bushfire resilience. Building to a high BAL standard is often essential for the Tasmanian areas she works in, as was the case with Eaglehawk Nest. 

Eaglehawk Nest is a small home built in 2021, for a couple living on the Tasman Peninsula, not far from Port Arthur. The narrow, steep block, the vegetation and the wastewater treatment system forced the location of the house to the middle of the hill, which made access difficult, but the resulting view across the Bay is stunning. Uta says the slight curve of the Eastern façade, out to the view, “is offering a hugging gesture to the bay”.   

There is a biodiversity overlay in many places in Tasmania and interests can conflict, where the bushfire expert requires some of the vegetation removed but there is a biodiversity overlay protecting it. Uta says, “trying to decide which trees can be kept is a combination of aesthetics, conservation and fire hazard. A weighing up of the different values”.  

Green Design Architects encourages urban infill over green-field sites, as it can be great loss for clients to lose the natural setting – aesthetically and more importantly, in terms of losing natural values.  

At Eaglehawk Nest the clients reluctantly had to remove trees and vegetation, but as a silver lining, this allowed better solar access for the house. With more extensive land clearing, the site may have been reduced below BAL-19, but Green Design and the client opted to keep as many trees as possible, including two mature gums. Uta says, “The mature white gums are important to frame the view and retain natural amenity of the site, as well as offering foraging ground to local threatened species”.  

Interestingly, new buildings can no longer be built in Tasmania in areas with a BAL rating over 29. Uta says “It is near impossible to obtain a Tasmanian Fire Service approval to build to BAL-40″. While Eaglehawk Nest is rated BAL-29, it has been built to a higher standard.

Eaglehawk Nest has a simple plan and roof form with a modest footprint of 82sqm. Uta said “we reduced the overall embodied energy and heating demand of the building by rationalising the footprint to the smallest comfortable size”.

The house is a lightweight timber construction, with materials of low embodied energy throughout. 

Uta also likes to use local or recycled building materials as much as possible, but says it is difficult to obtain them in Tasmania. Eaglehawk Nest uses recycled convict brick, plantation Silvertop Ash, steel, cement sheeting and some recycled Tasmanian Oak. The stone walls and landscaping use rocks from the site.