Sustainability in Sydney, Australia - Day 4

Day 4 in Sydney took us to the development of 161 Castlereagh/242 Pitt. This project is being developed by Grocon, the largest private development and construction company, and is due to be complete in early 2013.  It is 50 levels of retail and office space.  Grocon has designed several sustainability elements to be incorporated in the building.  

Some of these features are:

·    Outside air is in 150% of the building 

·    High efficiency chillers with a 1200 kw trigeneration plant where the excess heat is used for heating the water

o   Building will be completely off the grid

·    Lighting is on timers and have plans to determine if they can make it the first LED building 

·    Automatic blinds

·    Rainwater harvested and test fire water collected for reuse

·    Reviewing the idea of installing wind turbines on the roof…they would like it to be the first building with their sign illuminated by wind

·    95% of the waste produced in the demolition process was recycled and 90% of the construction waste is targeted to be recycled

·    Trying to make it the greenest building in the world and plans to not only get Green Star rating but LEED as well

The building that started the sustainability journey for Australia was Bovus’ 30 Bond.  This development was by far my favorite to visit.  30 Bond received a 5-Star Green Star rating for design and as-build as well as a 5-Star NABERS rating for their operations.  It incorporated several green features, one of which was new to me, chilled beams.  This is a cooling system that uses chilled water to absorb the heat in the building.  Apparently water absorbs about 4x the amount of heat than air absorbs.  The ceiling tiles are perforated so the air can easily circulate throughout the building. Overall the building receives 90% of cooling from the chilled billed system and 10% from fresh air.  100% of building heating comes from fresh air. 

The design of the building is clean and rustically contemporary.  You walk into the atrium and are greeted by a beautiful, gigantic sandstone wall.  This wall provides a natural barrier to the elements maintaining a cool temperature in the atrium.  Cool air moves down the wall through grates on the floor to the basement.  The offices are huge open spaces where everyone has the ability to work together.  The windows have automatic shutters that regulate the natural to artificial light ratio in the building.  The community spaces including the kitchen and break areas are strategically placed in suspended pods throughout the building. They used goat hair carpet and bamboo flooring.  Additionally, they have a small rainwater tank, a green roof, and they send their “green” waste to a company that uses it to generate energy. 

Bovus plans to continue to incorporate sustainability features into future developments and do all they can to encourage their tenants to operate the building as designed.  An area of improvement mentioned by Matt Williams of Bovus was that they could track tenant energy and water better.