DESIGNING IN HARMONY WITH NATURE
Rena Architects, established in 1985, is a small, friendly architecture practice focusing on ecologically sustainable residential design including renovations and new homes. We specialize in ecological, sustainable, energy-efficient design and construction, heritage architecture and designing in harmony with nature including building in Bushfire Prone areas.
We are passionate about organic and sustainable design and always include passive solar design and healthy building advice in all our projects. We pay attention to orientation, insulation and seasonal climate changes and we encourage the use of outdoor rooms and courtyard designs which work very well in the Australian climate. We shape buildings that require less power consumption, that are warm, open, natural, functional, easy and economical.
We shape buildings to support your well-being by aligning your needs and your environment. We intimately understand the impact a well-designed environment has on the wellbeing of people who live there. Wellness is another way of saying taking care of the health of human beings – it means fresh air, it means daylight, thermal comfort, non-toxic materials, it means creating spaces that are humane, joyful and life-supporting. And beautiful!
Sustainable design it is not just about new materials, new technologies and new forms but is more about changing our attitudes from mechanistic and reductionist to somatic and holistic, offering a life-affirming approach based on new science and receptive attitude to our intuition and feeling responses.
our Expertise:
energy-efficient and passive solar design
sustainable and healthy building design
building in Bushfire Prone areas
buildings in Heritage Conservation areas
Office team (variable):
Principal: Rena Czaplinska-Archer
Architectural Assistants: Courtney Owen, Anna Osipova, Adhika Pranawahadi, Jonathan Fernandez
Photographer: Kasia Werstak
About Rena Czaplinska-Archer
Rena Czaplinska-Archer is an experienced ecological architect, teacher, writer and multi-disciplinary artist and somatic practicioner, former Sydney University Architecture Faculty Lecturer and a founder of Time for Drawing workshops which are offered in Australia and internationally. Drawing for Rena is journey of discovery, tuning the body and the senses, listening deeply, sensing what's alive. She is interested in body conscious design and sees training in sensory awareness and embodiment as a key component of an architectural practice.
Rena holds a PhD in Theory and History of Modern Architecture and a Post Graduate degree in Social Ecology, and has lectured and tutored in Sustainable Architectural Design at Sydney University for over 20 years.
In her PhD on architecture of James Stirling she discovered body in movement as a design tool and later became a student of an American dance pioneer Anna Halprin exploring relationships between body, movement and space. This had a profound effect on the way Rena works and teaches. She is fascinated by the question of seeing and sensory perceptions and inspired by her lifelong interdisciplinary research into architecture, art and phenomenology and the writing of Merleau-Ponty and Juhani Pallasmaa.
Rena received several architectural awards for her work and her writing has been published both in Australia and in Europe. Her drawings are held in private collections in Australia, Finland and USA.
“In my youth, living in a damaged by war ancient European city, I spent my free time going away bushwalking in the mountains. I fell in love with the forests, bird calls, and far horizons and became a passionate bushwalker, visiting different landscapes, learning the stories of the land. When the acid rain came it had a devastating effect on my beloved mountains. The trees lost their leaves and died. Forest became silent. In my heart I decided to commit my life to sustainable ecological living. That’s what motivates me.”