CoolSpaces

About

CoolSpaces is led by sustainable house campaigner and environmental consultant Claudia Kaltenstadler. Claudia’s daughter, Elena Kaltenstadler, is a sustainable-design evangelist who also contributes her skills as a photographer and digital native.

Together they work with international and national architects individually selected by Claudia. These architects are chosen for their ability, imagination, integrity and alignment with a commitment to homes that optimize joy, respect the value of space and walking gently on the earth, and honour enduring and thoughtfully-scaled design. They also stand behind everything they create.

There’s quite a history to the company
As a new-comer to New Zealand in 2006, Claudia was taken aback by the lack of affordable, cost effective, energy efficient homes. It was something she wanted to change and has worked very hard to achieve.

CoolSpaces is the result
For clients, Claudia is also the pivot-point, the safe pair of hands and sympathetic ear providing personal, efficient and thorough project liaison and process management, that takes clients from home wishing and dreaming, through design choice and crafting, to complete home realization.

Our Services

Testimonials

I first met Claudia 2 years ago and she was extremely helpful and knowledgeable about the industry. Highly recommended.

Rosina

Claudia had a great amount of knowledge about energy efficiency which we have taken on board and put in to our building plans.

Louise

Met with Claudia today and she has actually installed hope in me with regards to my plans and dreams for our new build. For such a scary process that involves keeping to a budget. She really ensures me that there is something out there for everyone.

Melissa

So far Claudia has been super helpful with planning our high performance home, her knowledge in this area is huge and I can honestly say Claudia has taken away a load of stress for me. Looking forward to the rest of our project & many more to come

Mandy

Architectural Services

This is the first time designing and building my own home. It was very daunting and I went through Bark as well as a few other contacts, to determine who would work best for my needs. I was building a small one bedroom cottage for myself, which is to be all off-grid. Claudia first introduced herself and then discussed with me options of being sustainable and eco as possible with the footprint I had. I was building within an orchard and had not considered all of my options. Due to the size of the build and the fact I knew a lot of what I wanted, I decided to go with her. At first it was a little shaky but I put that down to the architect not having a firm understanding of what I wanted and the budget of my build. I had only discussed this with Claudia so I think some of this was lost in translation. I believe going forward, it is best to push to have a consultation discussion with the architect prior to them submitting their first concept draft. Once the conversation took place and the second draft came through, it was almost how I had envisioned it and with a few tweaks here and there, I was able to sign off on the third draft, a very happy client. Claudia is very focused on you as a client and checks in regularly with you on how you are progressing with the architect. I'm sure she is keeping them on point as well.

Karen