The energy at the GBCA TRANSFORM Conference was focused, determined and collected. Sleeves rolled up – literally and figuratively – as speaker after speaker brought out the big themes – embodied carbon, circularity, nature impacts, social value, First Nations stewardship and adaptive reuse.
It’s like we no longer need to talk about energy efficiency and renewable because that’s now business as usual. The theme of climate resilience and the reality that it’s not a distant prospect—it’s here—was also uppermost. As Uncle Michael West said in his Welcome to Country, Mother Earth is talking to us. Cyclones are moving south, and when he suggested the audience imagine what might happen if one hits Cammeraygal, Gadigal, and Eora Country, there was a collective shiver.
Sydney is not designed for the emerging climate, and in Western Sydney, the sweltering city has become a major public health threat.
“We need to listen to the science, we need to listen to the data,” he said.
Designing for the future now
New South Wales minister for planning and public spaces, Paul Scully, also brought the topic of climate to the fore, in the form of the state mitigation and adaptation plan, which is the first in the state’s history.
He also reminded the crowd that we know how to design and build appropriate housing, citing the example of the University of Wollongong Illawarra Flame retrofit and the Desert Rose house that was designed for sustainable, affordable living for older people.
Landcom is now rolling out the lessons of the past at scale with the Panorama Home, being built in partnership with McDonald Jones Homes in Western Sydney. This energy-positive home design aims to transform optimal sustainability from a niche at the top of the market to a routine practice in the volume homes segment. At 8.7 Star NatHERS, it would be an affordability game changer.
The NSW pattern book is also being updated, to provide developers and builders with a range of housing that can get fast-tracked development approval including duplexes, townhouses and dual level apartments.
He says the market of new home buyers expects sustainability and liveability.
“Young people are looking for more than a few LED lights as the contribution to sustainability,” Scully said.
Tenants have their own agenda
The demand for low carbon, energy efficient and low impact buildings is also coming to the fore in commercial property, as Dale Connor from Lend Lease said at the Leader’s Panel event.
“The major tenants have all got net zero targets. You don’t get what you want from tenants (as a landlord) unless you have a target.”
Connor said Lendlease is now trying to get gas out of apartments, and there are “some challenges” with this at the top end of the market, he said.
Scape chief executive, Anouk Darling said that some years back people needed convincing on sustainability. Now they get it, but it took the industry so long, that we now have a crisis of trying to achieve transformation in a very short period of time.
Chief executive of the City of Sydney, Monica Barone, said that in the current global mood, there’s a “mistrust” in information and institutions, which is where collaboration and getting people to do things together in a hands-on way breaks through. People can’t misunderstand a practical process.
GBCA chief executive Davinia Rooney said that while we used to talk about the “why” now we need to talk about the “how”.
Circular economy at Bondi Pavilion
In multiple panels, the topic of circular economy raised a range of perspectives. It’s a big part of the “how” for reducing embodied or upfront carbon. It’s a huge part of how for addressing nature’s impacts. It also has a role in achieving successful adaptive reuse, including acknowledging the “social value” of existing materiality, Peter Tonkin, director of Tonkin Zulaikha Green said in his case study presentation on Bondi Pavilion.
The community of Waverly was so attached to retaining the building for the community, that the campaign to save it from being refurbished for mostly commercial space brought down the council.
Nature enters the conversations
Nature impacts are also an area rapidly emerging on the radar. Dr Matthew Bell, EY’s global climate and sustainability services leader said during a fireside chat with Jorge Chapa, there has been less pushback on nature compared to climate even in the US.
Bell said many of the banks have already been “stress testing” the financial dimensions of nature impacts, and finding those impacts are more profound in terms of risk and cost than climate.
Because financial organisations exist to “build value over time,” many large companies in Europe are now studying the Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures framework and readying themselves for action.
“The built environment has always been linked to impacts on nature, we just haven’t thought of it that way.”
The Snaps
Images: Bevin Liu, The Fifth Estate