19: Riverhead passive solar design house

Ingo Ratsdorf is a registered architect with Babbage Consultants based in Auckland. 

Having grown up and been trained in Germany, Ingo is very aware of how poorly most New Zealand homes stack up against international standards. 

When Ingo and his family were hunting for their dream renovation project, they were continually overwhelmed with the size of the job they saw. It seemed each house they looked at would need far too much work to bring up to a level of quality and comfort that would satisfy them. 

And so it was that they ultimately realised they would have to build from scratch.

Listen in to our conversation as Ingo explains the inspiration and challenges of building and completing (almost) their dream in Riverhead.

He shares some sound advice for anyone looking at start a building project. 

This podcast is best accompanied by a great slideshow of the build available here on slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/IngoRatsdorf/riverhead-passive-solar-design-house

I hope this finished product will be an inspiration for your project!

The inspiring  book Ingo referred to and which I also highly recommend for anyone interested in design, 'Cradle to Cradle' can be found here: http://amzn.to/VVbBBr