DESIGN IV: Australian Passive House

This is our second design project of the semester in this class. We were tasked by our teacher to create a passive house on a site near Bondi Beach in New South Wales, Australia. Were given a series of requirements: there must be no less than 8 shipping containers as part of the structure, it must get below a rating below 50 on BEopt and it should satisfy most of the passive house requirements. We were told to provide a site plan, floor plans, elevations, a detailed building section, a detailed wall section, at least three three building details, building performance analysis data, an axonometric or other diagram showing where shipping containers are located, a series of renderings, and a detailed site and building model.
We started out on the site model, which we did as a class. We all chipped in monetarily and most of us helped with the construction of it; I helped by staining and gluing the model pieces together. Once we were done with the site model we progressed into building design. At first, I thought our entire building had to be shipping containers so I tried thinking with that approach. Around that time, I started doing unrelated research into Eduardo Chillida, a Basque sculptor, specifically his artwork Wind Comb or Comb of the Wind in San Sebastian, Spain and Eulogy to Water in Barcelona, Spain. Since our side had a similar geographical location to Wind Comb, I decided to design my building based on Eduardo Chillida's sculptures. However, this made working the shipping containers into my design even more difficult; eventually however our instructor pointed out that our building doesn't have to be completely shipping containers, which gave me enough flexibility to use my inspiration and use the containers. I chose to segregate my containers to the dining room, office, and storage and utility rooms on the first floor and the master bathroom, dressing room, and storage room on the second floor; I did not include a basement. Once I got a design that works, I refined my design into a building with a series of curved elements reflecting Chillida's sculptures; I also designed two artworks that resemble Chillida's sculptures to support the balconies on the second story.
Our teacher gave us an extension and then removed the detail aspect of the project, thus no details will be included.
The passive features I included in the building were access to natural daylighting. Other sustainable features I included were a large solar array on the roof with two solar hot water heaters, a high insulation value, a tightly sealed facade, and three foot overhangs to stop too much daylight access.
