2024 Housing Summit Recap
BBWG interviewed Sam Brown, panelists on the “High performance homes. Delivered” session at the 2024 Housing Summit.
The New Zealand Green Building Council’s (NZGBC) 2024 Housing Summit consisted of 14 sessions, not including morning tea and lunch, and over 20 speakers from across the industry both nationally and internationally.
BBWG has had the privilege of speaking with Sam Brown, director at Arête Architects and one of the speakers on the “High performance homes. Delivered” panel session.
Sam helped create Arête Architects three years ago. Today, Sam and Arête Architects are working to develop innovative “off-the-shelf, high performance, modular home plans'' called SIPtris.
“SIPtris Housing leans into the Tetris concept of small pieces, or forms, that fuse to make a whole”. The goal is to provide affordable, quick to erect and low waste builds that deliver aesthetically pleasing and quality homes to the standard of Homestar 6 minimum.
The panel that Sam sat on discussed the delivery of homes to high Homestar qualification. Panelist Nathan Edmondston even discussed his 10 Homestar certified passive home, a goal once believed unreachable.
“What I like about Homestar is its holistic approach”, says Sam. Whereas some certifications may focus solely on energy efficiency, Homestar tackles a multitude of categories including C02 emissions and embodied carbon, construction methodology and more.
Sam works between Wellington and the Upper Clutha, and under Arête Architects they have delivered 2 home builds in Queenstown and 1 in Hawea under the Homestar classification.
NZGBC officially presented its newly published Homestar Design Guide at the Housing Summit.
When asked about its release, Sam said “it’s absolutely fantastic! Even for me working in the realm for so many years and being a certified Homestar assessor, but especially for my team to immediately be able to find answers to turn to when they have certain questions”.
While the guide was a special takeaway from the event, it wasn’t a key highlight. According to Sam, embodied carbon was a key focus point of this year’s Summit.
However, for Sam, the most impactful part of the Housing Summit was the networking and the ability to face-to-face with so many others in the industry focused on bringing the industry up.
Sam was impressed with the change from last year’s summit that, while full of housing scientists, the overall feeling was hopefulness without actual goals or outcomes. Whereas this year, there was a big focus on positive things actually being done around the nation.
“The overall feeling of this year’s Housing Summit was that the industry is starting to do the right thing, but we still need to do more”.
