CARBON TRIGGERS: At beautiful Callan Park in Sydney’s inner west, the New South Wales’ parklands authority wants to demolish nine buildings.
It’s allocated $4.8 million to do so. In a cute turn of PR-spin the proposed demolition is called an “investment”.
We took a detailed tour around the 64 hectare park a few weeks ago to see for ourselves how badly dilapidated these buildings actually are. Our guide was yet another passionate advocate of the place who has spent a lot of time digging into the available resources.
The parklands authority and the local Inner West Council say the demolition plans are due to safety grounds.
From our non-professional point of view and the very firm view of our guide, the parklands’ spin fails to convince the “investment” could not be more usefully spent on maintaining at least most of these buildings.
Some are sadly already on their journey back to nature, with trees allowed to grow through their roofs despite their clearly former value.
The balance seem not to be at all dilapidated but just… ugly.
Or plain boring.
But what’s wrong with that?
Not so long ago many of us thought red brick walk up flats were ugly. So too, those classic AV Jennings triple fronted brick veneer homes. Then, suddenly, it seemed, these typologies became cool, or even attractive. Put it down to some clever and highly persuasive artist/designers but we suspect it was “needs must” that drove the transition in the emotions that surround these places. They were cheaper, they worked well, and who cares what the outside looks like when you’ve got a cosy home?
Soon any building that works to serve our needs, ugly or not, will likely become more valuable than ever.
The reasons are around us in the news on an almost daily basis. Nature is depleted, its resources drying up and ever more costly to acquire.
The secondary impacts of a depleted environment – flood, fire, drought and extreme heat – mean many of our existing buildings are no longer fit for purpose so will need deep retrofits. This will put more strain on the cost of building our built environment, demand and supply equations kicking in.
Attractive buildings will be the least of our concern. Safety and security will be paramount.
There’s now an emerging movement that paints all construction as a nature depleting extractive process and calls for a moratorium on building/unbuilding (or demolition). The leading proponent of this movement that kicked off a few years ago at Harvard University, is French architect Charlotte Malterre-Barthes.
And just to hand is from Philip Oldfield head of school at University of New South Wales and colleagues, which shows that the Australian office sector alone is on track to release 138 megatonnes of CO2e over the next 25 years, equivalent to the annual emissions of 36 coal-fired power stations.
Check out the interactive graphics that show how serious this issue is.
At Callan Park the big question might be what you could do with $4.8 million other than demolish some buildings that could serve 100 different community uses (but please nothing commercial because once commercial rules and regs kick in you’re looking at mini iterations of a Westfield shopping centre – clean, neat, safe, entirely boring and unnatural, energy guzzling, always.)
Hall Greenland a former councillor at Leichhardt Council now Inner West who has been actively involved with the Friends of Callan Park told The Fifth Estate that “the bones of the buildings are still very much intact, but, having been vacant for some 30 years, there was some wear and tear – a small fire in one of them and some vandalism.”
The buildings were in “fine condition, which was the situation until five to six years ago. The Friends were divided on the demolitions as many had given up on the state government managers of Callan Park over the past three decades ever doing anything useful with the buildings.
“It was very much demolition by neglect. They weren’t 19th century heritage.”
Callan Park could well serve as a case study for our next Big Debate on Tuesday where a panel representing some of the key touchpoint that make up the built environment will discuss the current state of play in Australia in regard to carbon accounting and, quite frankly, how far behind global leaders we are.
In the UK, there’s a London Plan strong enough to knock back demolition of Marks & Spencer, a major department store in Oxford Street, until a dramatically lower carbon replacement was designed. Denmark has strict carbon limits for residential property.
And New York has a carbon reduction target that property owners either meet or pay a tax to not meet, Australia has none of the above.
In Australia we rely almost entirely on market drivers to advance climate targets.
Panel member for the debate Tristram Carfrae from Arup says it was the market that led transformation in London; the government came along later to mandate standards.
He thinks this method can work in Australia too.
In any case the City of Sydney, can’t impose London style carbon budgets at least at this stage, says Deputy Lord Mayor Jess Miller, also on the panel. It is hugely constrained by the state government, which has already subsumed planning powers for swathes of projects. The City’s hands are also tied to prevent buildings lying empty, and heritage structures deliberately allowed to deteriorate (such as in Callan Park).
But should it be? Rules can be changed.
Always though, the market answers primarily to one master – cost.
Architect Filomena Beshara, who is development manager – ESG and Innovation lead, for Freecity, will also take the floor, points out that each building must be taken on a case by case basis.
Her background includes four years with builder Built and seven years with an adaptive reuse developer in New York. It’s given her unique insights into the decision making process of developers.
Don’t underestimate developers, she tells us.
“There is an implication that developers just want to go in there with a wrecking ball, and that’s not how I see it for two reasons. First, I think that they can see that there is potential in retaining certain things. There is a commercial value attached to retaining elements and the history of a place. People love that, and developers understand it.”
Her second point is that developers understand that if you retain as much as you it can be good for the environment and good for the pocket.
Nothing beats an ambitious client. “There is nothing more exciting than working with a client that is super ambitious because it really fires you up. It’s like, yes, you want this? Let’s do it!”
But the builder’s ability to influence is limited. They might have ESD assessment tools clearly help but being skilled up in sustainability can generate the best outcomes.
First step, she says, is to speak the same language – understand the developer’s publicly proclaimed sustainability and climate goals. Does the project align with these?
Then there are the skills and tools that can offer solutions that go “above and beyond” the initial targets because these can demonstrate the value add benefit that can be delivered.
“If you don’t know anything about low carbon concrete mixes, how much they cost, what they are …in terms of embedded carbon, obviously you cannot put those solutions on the table.
“Anyone can build a building, but what else can you add on top of the basic offering?”
For Michael Mihailou, a director withquantity surveyor Rider Levett Bucknall there was a natural evolution of QS work to move from pricing the various components of development or demolition to include carbon assessment.
“We help in quantifying the various products within existing buildings that are being removed, and then also quantifying embodied carbon within what you’re building as well.”
Carbon calculations, he says, are very closely linked to costs, especially in new developments with big ticket items such as concrete, steel and glass.
“They’re really the crux of what makes up the building, and therefore they’re the items that have the biggest impact on the total emissions for a build.”
A consideration in the QS might revolve around substitution of standard concrete with more carbon-efficient concrete, of which there are many options, he says. However, while in some instances the material costs might not change but the cost of buildability might be an issue.
“To understand the cost you have to understand everything behind what’s going on,” he says.
This means knowing a bit about structural engineering, a bit about building services, finishes and architectural finishes and “what it costs to get something nice out of Germany compared to something out of China… so we have to be across it all without being the expert.”
And then the skills to read the market ahead of time – up to three years as this is how long some projects take before they start construction.
“So we have to predict what it will cost three years’ time, even though we don’t know what’s going to happen in the Middle East, for instance, what’s going to happen to energy costs in general, or what’s the price of concrete in three years’ time.
“It’s very interesting because we typically deal with just cost. So, to be part of the conversation when cost is not the major driver in some instances is refreshing.”
