The Smarter Small Home™ concept, combining a small lot and small home with a smart choice of materials and an efficient construction method, has resulted in a rise in sustainable and affordable developments across the country.
Brent Blacklow, Designer of The Smarter Small Home, chose James Hardie sheet products from the very first stage, minimising waste and maximising efficient construction methods.
“Many of James Hardie’s products are sheet products and so a carpenter can cover an area of three square metres in 10 minutes. These products just have a bucket-load of flexibility at a really affordable price,” says Blacklow.
When Met Developments’ architect Joe Evans first saw The Smarter Small Home, he “just loved it.”
Evans was able to prove that a home can be sustainable and affordable. “There’s quite a lot of issues within the development industry about [government legislation] pushing up the price of developing, making it more unaffordable,” Evans says. “But then on the flip side, we’ve gone and done a development which has an average price of $322,000, and it’s not 5 star, it’s 6 star — five years ahead of what’s required and affordable.”
