One bright note from last week’s Building Ministers Forum was an agreement to progress work to increase the energy performance requirements for residential construction under the National Construction Code for the planned 2022 iteration.

There are many logical and economic reasons to support better energy efficiency in housing especially for low income housing where standards sometimes verge on the appalling, but no, the government says no again.

At last, after 12 long years we might finally see some improvement in the energy efficiency requirements for housing.

The new National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation’s first loan is for $35 millioin to Hume Community Housing.

There are more sustainable models of compact cities than a 1920s utopia of towers, expressways and gyrocopters.

Passivehaus homes used to have a distinctive look but with the help of a few prize-winning materials such as graphene there’s now more variation in look and style than ever before – even Victorian-era townhouses are getting the Passivehaus treatment.

Urban renewal or social cleansing? It’s an increasingly fraught question as traditional occupants are pushed out by rising prices and elite workers, but now one tech giant is trying hard to reverse the trends. 

You can almost wrap a bow around some years and consign them to the storage unit, but 2018 has not been one of them. Many of the hottest issues that were in the spotlight remain unresolved or have been investigated to near death. We can only hope for real and meaningful action in 2019.

It seems like a no-brainer: cooling of buildings and neighbourhoods can be helped by having light coloured roofs. But the question has caused no end of controversy. Let’s settle it once and for all.

Pressure is mounting to increase “out of date” 6 star minimum energy efficiency standards for new homes ahead of the COAG Energy Council meeting next Wednesday.

OPINION: The dilemma that faces many local governments in cities around the world is how to finance regeneration schemes when their central government does not offer sufficient support and land prices are high. Cities like Vienna and Hamburg have found a solution that doesn’t price out their own citizens. London has not.

UPDATED 28 November 2018: According to researchers speaking during last week’s Co.Lab 2018 gathering in Parramatta, hosted by Landcom and UrbanGrowth NSW Development Corporation, development is sometimes optimised for profit…

Many Australians still equate prefabricated construction with mass-produced, characterless houses that are not built to last. But one of Japan’s biggest builders of prefab homes has been in Australia for…

While the recent Avdiev Remuneration Report pointed to some minor spot clouds around for salaries in the property sector, you’d expect professionals in the residential sector, architects in particular, to feel a tad more vulnerable than most.