About the studio
Building homes is building community
Jaye Irving has spent twenty years working out how the built and the natural can hold each other up.
Architect, artist, builder and permaculturist — the studio is one designer and the trades he keeps.
An interest in natural materials took Jaye a long way around: rammed earth in India, ecological sewage design in the UK, alternative building in Ireland, bamboo geometry in Peru. Those years built the skills the studio still runs on — integrated food systems, on-site waste treatment, and building with bamboo, earth and straw.
The travelling ended at a permaculture design course in northern New South Wales. The knowledge went straight back into the ground: a multi-dwelling permaculture farm for an NGO in southern India, built hands-on with local villagers from materials found within walking distance, its gardens fed by water the site had been throwing away.
Sustainability isn’t just about design. It’s about life.
Jaye Irving
Philosophy
Nature does the work first
The sun rises every day, the wind blows, plants grow and water flows. A building that reads those four things properly needs very little help afterwards. Orientation, shading, mass and cross-ventilation come before any equipment — then the material is chosen for the climate it has to sit in, not for the catalogue.
The result is a house that stays in the comfort band through a Northern Rivers summer without a compressor running, on walls that were grown in a paddock rather than fired in a kiln.
Services
What we do
Design
We develop the brief with you, then sketches, coloured drawings, 3D models, colour schemes and an indicative cost estimate you can budget against.
Contract documentation
Detailed drawings and specifications, advice on the right building contract, coordination of engineering consultants, council submission, and a BASIX or NatHERS assessment.
Construction project management
Competitive pricing from certified builders, tender assessment, contract preparation and administration through to handover.
Workshops and lectures
Hands-on bamboo, earth and strawbale workshops for communities, festivals and permaculture courses across Australia and the Pacific.
Specialising in
- Practising since
- 2004
- Projects
- 20 published
- Awards
- National Building Design, 2007
- Based
- Northern Rivers NSW
drawn by hand, on site
Start here
Tell us about your site
Send the block, the brief and the budget. We will tell you honestly what is possible — and what it will cost to run once it is built.
