environa studio

Founded 40 years ago by Tone Wheeler to concentrate on environmentally based architecture, hence the name, and we are a studio, not an office. Over time, we have moved to ‘triple bottom line design’, a more holistic approach to social, environmental, and financial sustainability.

Projects: Not-for-Profit

Our projects are of three types. The first is our work with not-for-profit organisations, community and social providers, where we are designing social housing, affordable housing, community buildings and retirement villages. Our clients include major churches, Anglican, Uniting, Catholic, and the Nan Tien Buddhists. These not for-profits do not always generate fees needed to maintain an architectural practice

Projects: Commercial

Thus, the second type are commercial projects, usually run by developers, where we aim to bring a heightened awareness of environmental and social sustainability. Although higher fees are on offer, our success rate is not always high, given our adherence to sustainable principles. Nevertheless, we rely on a traditional fee schedule from the commercial work to offset the not-for-profits income.

Projects: Research

The third type of practice is architectural research and publications. We continue to explore architectural forms that would increase sustainability. Research that has informed practice include:
• external accessed single-sided apartments for better cross-ventilation, (exhibited in model form at the Venice Biennale in 2008);
• better project home designs, including work with 3 major builders, and construction of an exhibition home (AIA award in 2010);
• most recently researching designs for three-story walk-up flats – the optimum sustainable form – where our advocacy is engaged with the NSW Dept of Planning for work on a pattern book.

Over time this research by the studio has contributed the writing of several books and published over 300 articles in the SMH, A&D, Fifth Estate, AA and AR.