Team Green Architects

22/10/2026

Imagine a pool, a fitness centre, an early childhood centre and a playgroup, all together in Glenorchy. Here are the first renders of the community project we’ve been designing, and fundraising has now begun.It’s being designed to be sustainable and ultra low energy.

We’ll share the website as soon as it’s live, so you can see how to get involved. Watch this space.

21/10/2026

Throwback Thursday this week is our Mountain View Road House. This corner post was originally designed to reflect the solid piers elsewhere in the house. But as the house developed on site, it became clear to all of us that it needed to be a simple steel post to support the downpipe.

Designs often change once they’re built, and we think the house is better for it. It’s a good reminder that a plan on paper is a starting point, and that what you see on site matters.

16/10/2026

If your house has a great view and big glass, this is for you. External blinds stop the heat before it gets inside, so you don’t have to close the curtains and lose the view. Rachel explains what a difference they’ve made in her home.

16/10/2026

11/10/2026

We recently visited a gorgeous house that was being finished, and the builders had used a double stud wall for extra insulation but hadn’t made it airtight. That really surprised me. Why spend that extra money and not make it airtight?

Past a certain point, adding more insulation hits diminishing returns. Making a building airtight keeps paying you back, and it costs less than building a thicker wall around the whole house. An airtight house is more comfortable, cheaper to heat and healthier to live in.

It’s still not well understood in NZ, and most people haven’t tried it because they assume it costs too much or their clients won’t want it. The photos show the same kind of wall with and without airtightness.

If you’re building or renovating, ask your designer and builder how they plan to make the house airtight. It’s one of the best value things you can do.

09/10/2026

This mornings walk! Beautiful spring! ❤️

04/10/2026

Last night we left a door wide open. Not our smartest move, and not only from a security perspective, because there was frost on the ground this morning!

It did turn into an accidental experiment on how a Passive House copes with a massive opening overnight. It was the upstairs office door, and downstairs, where we live, we didn't notice a thing. Upstairs was a bit chilly when we got in at 8am, but by 10am it was back to 20°C.

So overall, a good experiment (though not one we plan to repeat).

29/09/2026

Would we do this again? Our windows, if we're honest - maybe not.... Like most of our projects, we specified European triple-glazed units on our own Passive House — but here we also went full timber, inside and out, which isn't how we usually do it. We loved how it performed, and how the lighter timber frames looked against the black cladding. But the timber needs real upkeep: a regular oil, nothing huge on its own, but a genuine pain to stay on top of when life's busy. It's exactly why we specify timber inside, aluminium outside for most clients now — same performance, same look from the room you're standing in, without the maintenance sitting on your to-do list.

25/09/2026

One of the first Passive Houses we ever designed — for a client in Christchurch who wanted to build a whole series of them, back when Passive House was still new to New Zealand. It never happened. We've used AI rendering to try a few different cladding options on it now, since we never got to see it built. Which one would you choose?

22/09/2026

Two window frames, side by side. One's a standard NZ aluminium frame. The other's European, and about three times the depth.

The difference comes down to a thin strip of plastic inside the aluminium — the thermal break. It's the only thing stopping heat moving straight through the metal from inside to outside (and the cold doing the same thing in winter).

Look at how much room the European frame gives that little strip to do its job, compared to the NZ one. It's not that our frames are badly made — they're just built to a lower standard than what's common overseas. But side by side, the difference is huge, and most people choosing windows have no idea that tiny strip in the middle is doing all the work.