After eight years of planning, Melbourne couple Glenn and Kate Morris are finally making a start on their striking, sustainable ?sand dune' house near Inverloch on Victoria's Gippsland coastline.

Greg, a former bricklayer is passionate about two things - his family (partner Emma & their 4 yr old son Archie), and... bricks. As a testament to his love for both, he's building (literally with his own hands) a tri-level, solid brick contemporary terrace house with a cantilevered pool on the top floor.

Hoteliers Richard and Denise have knocked down the family home in the Adelaide Hills and are re-building an even bigger version, despite the fact their kids are grown.

Ardent collectors Kerry and Judy have a passion for Sante-fe style, mud houses even though they live on a sloping bush block on Sydney's north shore.

Darren and Ruth Rogers have almost polar opposite views about what their new house should be. Darren wants all the bells and whistles - home cinema, wine cellar, even a lift. Ruth wants chickens, a vegetable garden and a hills hoist. Finding a design that will satisfy both of them and their young son Raymond, is their shared aim.

Chris and wife Belinda bought the small ?car park' of land next door to their existing house, just 3.9 metres wide: literally a tiny gap in a long row of heritage listed cottages in Sydney's inner west Forest Lodge. Their plan is to squeeze every centimeter of land into a uniquely sustainable house.

Thirteen years ago Meredith and Matt Bayfield needed an escape from their busy lives as doctors in Sydney so they purchased a working sheep property at Ilford in the central table lands of NSW.

Daniela Turrin, Niran Peiris and their son Calum are doing something no-one in their historic street in the prestigious Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill has done before. They're knocking down their old house to build a smaller one. But these are people who believe that the family that spends time together stays together - a premise that forms the core of the design of their new home.

Anchored in the middle of Bass Strait and subject to the ferocious winds of the Roaring Forties, King Island is about as far from the tropics as you can get in Australia. Yet artists Di and Andrew Blake have decided to build a house there after almost twenty years of living in far East Arnhem Land... .2 locations literally at either end of the country.

Self confessed hippies Cole and Jane Bradshaw bought a thin sliver of land on an exceptionally steep site only a landscaper could love, in the hilly suburb of Dynnyrne in Hobart ... ... a place they chose as much for the tight knit community it sits in, as for the location itself.