Alice Springs has a hot dry summer and a cold night, sometimes on the same day. A house here has to do two opposite things: keep the day's heat out and hold the night's cool in. Thick walls do both. This concept is built from rammed earth, which takes most of a day to warm through and gives that warmth back slowly after dark.
The plan is a square around a courtyard. In a hot dry climate a courtyard beats a deck: it is shaded by the house itself from mid-afternoon, it is out of the wind, and the rooms around it get their light and air from a sheltered side rather than from the open desert.
Small windows to the west, big ones to the north, and a courtyard in the middle. That is most of the design.
A verandah three metres deep
Along the north the verandah is deep enough that the summer sun never reaches the wall, and shallow enough that the low winter sun gets under it and onto the living room floor. The hip roof carries it all the way round, so the earth walls stay in shade on the west as well.
The kitchen and the bath
The kitchen is a quiet one behind a pale stone wall, with the pantry and the fridge out of sight and the bench facing the courtyard. The bath is in an earth-walled room with one slot window high on the west, which lights the room in the evening without heating it.
What the Studio does with this
Start a home from this look and the Studio sets a country home under a hip roof, pale stone as the finish, and a quiet kitchen with a big pantry. Tell it Alice Springs and it will draw a sheltered courtyard rather than an open deck, small openings to the west, and living rooms that face north for winter sun.
What HWD does here
Hot dry, climate zone 3. Hot dry summer, warm winter. A hot summer and a cool night: a sheltered courtyard rather than an open deck, small openings west, and living rooms that face north for winter sun.
The Studio reads the climate from the town or postcode you give it. The zone boundaries follow a map, not postcodes, so it prints its reading as a note, never as a compliance statement.
Draw your version of this home.
Opens the Studio with the hip roof, pale stone and the country style already chosen. Change the rooms, the block and the state, and HWD draws it for where you are.
