With more than 17 years’ experience writing about sustainable homes and design, it’s no surprise Tamsin O’Neill and Tom Bodycomb’s family home is equal parts unconventional and innovative.

The couple behind Green Magazine had been looking for an opportunity to build a bespoke sustainable family home somewhere along the Great Ocean Road when they heard a hectare was for sale in Aireys Inlet.

‘It offered everything we were looking for. The orientation, the lie of the land and of course the vegetation type, open woodland,’ Tamsin says.

Their vision was to create a small footprint, energy efficient, and low impact residence, and they knew a prefabricated shipping container home by specialists Sonic Steel would tick all the boxes.

Tamsin enlisted help from her sister Rema O’Neill (an architect and energy advisor) to design the floorplan and engaged Cantilever Interiors for the internal fit out — tasking them with optimising the 115-square-metre build with built-in joinery and a sleek kitchen.

Cantilever Interiors creative director Kylie Forbes says just one visit to the site revealed a clear vision for the project: a robust dark form that could sit quietly among the surrounding trees, and frame views of this quiet setting.

‘They sit just above the ground, you step from their threshold and you are immediately in the landscape, without a porch or a roofline to transition you feels very much like camping,’ Kylie says.

Inside, Tamsin and Tom had a strong concept for a similarly muted palette.

‘Conceptually, the interior was to be clad in black ply, but materially this had barriers in application to the container modules, so we landed on cork as a substitute,’ she adds.

‘This brought a completely unique feel to the space. The colour is so rich, glowing and earthy.’

The kitchen and subsequent joinery were designed to maintain the intimacy of the space, while maximising functionality. On one end of the home, Cantilever’s K3 kitchen system was customised with concrete and stainless steel bench tops, with the dark green cupboards create a subtle visual link with the surrounding trees and scrub.

The team also created banquette seating with concealed storage further into the open-plan living room, surrounded by the family’s personal artwork collection.

The resulting home also has an impressive list of sustainability credentials. There’s no electrical heating or cooling, instead the home is passively designed to maximise sun in winter, whilst retractable awnings provide shading in summer, and multiple layers of insulation ensure the containers’ high thermal performance. All doors and windows are double glazed, and the electric heat pump hot water system reduces electricity consumption by up to 70% compared to a traditional (gas) hot water system. A heat recovery ventilation system also helps to maintain consistent internal temperature and air quality, by ensuring hourly air changes.

RACV installed the ‘energy hub’ with a 8.5kw solar panel array on the roof and 11.4kwh of battery storage, which supplies Tamsin and Tom with enough energy for their typical daily consumption, and incremental charging of an electric vehicle.

At just 115 sq metres, this home is everything it needs to be – and nothing more. It’s a clever, deliberately compact home that sits quietly in its idyllic surroundings, reminding us that sometimes, less really is more.