Planning authorities have welcomed initiatives by the likes
of Frasers Property in Sydney and Plus
Architecture in Melbourne
but guidelines and incentives to provide ecologically sustainable development
(ESD) for residential buildings are considered inadequate.
“The thing that’s really pathetic is the current
assessment tool only considers beat loss.” Plus Architecture director
Craig Yelland said of Melbourne’s
system.
“If you built an igloo or brick building without
windows, you’d get a great rating. It’s a Band-aid solution for developers that
do crap houses. The only thing it considers is insulation.”
Mr Yelland’s recently approved Society building in Praban,
which has almost sold out to mainly generation Y buyers, has Moped and bicycle
parking to encourage more environmentally friendly modes of transport and the
units are smaller in size and rainwater is collected and used for the gardens.
Despite a lack of incentives —such as providing credit for
people who put energy back into the power grid — Mr Yelland praised council
town planners, who were generally supportive of ESD principles.
“Some town planning departments offer benefits for ESD
initiatives. They’ll let you do an extra apartment, for example,” he said.
“It’s negotiable. There are rules and grey areas that are interpreted and
can be negotiated with the developer. They’ll say ‘if you do this, we’ll give
you that’. I have found alt town planning officers across Melbourne, without exception, are
supportive.”
Also in Melbourne dKO
principal and architect Koos de Keijzer has seen the first few stages of his Aurora project, a six-star, 7000-lot residential housing
estate in Melbourne’s
northern suburbs roll out.
Mr de Keijzer said it was “easy” to achieve a
six-star rating under current systems in Sydney and Melbourne because there
were no standards for well-designed homes.
“Six-star housing is going to become a matter of fact,
it will be just a baseline,” be said.
“There aren’t many planning authorities that understand
multi-housing developments. There’s probably a lack of skills to judge the quality
of built form on the ground. It’s quite obvious if you drive through suburbs
and see the woeful appearance of what our streets look like.”
The City of Sydney
is considering an ESD draft plan that aims to guide the assessment of green
initiatives of multi-unit residential buildings and complement the state
government’s BASIX regulations, which set energy and water reduction targets for
houses and units.
The draft will set standards in the use of materials, waste,
recycling, landscaping, stormwater management and solar access.
It’s a move welcomed by Frasers Property, which last month
announced the $2 billion development of the former CUB Brewery site would be a
six-star precinct, using a tri-generation energy plant and its own waste-water
treatment.
Frasers chief operating officer Nicholas Wolff said it was a pilot
project that would “well exceed” the BASIX requirements and while it
aimed to achieve carbon neutrality it would realistically cut emissions by up
to 70 per cent.
The initiatives would add between 6 and 8 per cent to the
cost of the project but would not be passed on to the consumer. “We
believe it will add to the end cost but we are also seeing technologies coming
down in cost all the time,” Mr Wolff said.
Illustration: Frasers Property plans a six-star development on ills former
GUS brewery site,
Source:
The Australian Financial Review Tuesday 29 April 2008 www.afr.com