As an earlier experiment, the owner built a guest house on the block of land as the first stage in his building program. Part of the guest house was built with concrete walls and the other part with a conventional frame, both parts were built to a six star energy rating. To the owners astonishment walking from one section to the other revealed a profoundly higher level of comfort in the concrete section in both summer and winter.
Following the success of the concrete walls in the guest house, the owner then embarked with his architect to design the main house utilising the comfort benefit of concrete walls. Matt Riley from Tonic Architecture chose an Insulated Concrete Formwork (ICF) method to design the walls. While this was Matt’s first attempt, he found it was easy to design and detail as it was similar to using conventional block work construction.