Eco Home

A practical guide to building, renovating and living sustainably in New Zealand today.

Everything you need to know to build, renovate or just live in an eco-friendly and sustainable way.

With loads of inspirational photographs of New Zealand homes, this book is packed full of practical and accessible information.

It presents the modern home by moving from room to room, to look at structural materials, furnishings and general life hacks to improve your personal green-star rating. As well as the living spaces (kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, office, living area, utility rooms and outdoor areas) it also looks at the wider issues - why make an eco home at all? Also covered are: principles of sustainable building, choosing a property, building a team of professionals, foundations and floors, the structure and the shell.

In a compact and colourful package, this book is both entertaining and informative. A must-have for all people with an eco-conscience.

About the Author

Melinda Williams is a New Zealand writer and editor specialising in architecture and design. Since her first job out of journalism school shooting home and interiors images for a suburban real estate paper, she has been interested in how people build and live in their homes.

Raised in a family where sustainability and a love for nature were part of daily life, her life-long interest in conservation and ecology came together with her passion for design as the ‘green architecture’ movement arrived in New Zealand in the early 2000s.

As former editor of architecture magazine Urbis, she established an annual ‘Green issue’, and has contributed articles about eco-design, living, art and culture to many local and international publications, including Dwell Asia, Surface Asia, Vogue Australia, Metro, Dish, Sunday, Canvas, Home New Zealand, and Monument. She is currently design editor for the New Zealand Herald’s weekly Viva magazine.

Melinda lives in Auckland with her partner, two children, and two dogs, surrounded by an ever-increasing local community of frogs, native lizards and birds. In her spare time she enjoys experiments in gardening and cooking.