It’s always encouraging to find developers in the real world – instead of our dreams – who genuinely push the green agenda, which is sadly still the exception rather than the rule, despite the rhetoric and great intentions. First, it’s not so easy.
We get that. Our whole world is geared toward an extractive economy so even today you need to push past the systemic barriers that steer you to business as usual to make even a dent in the direction we need to head.
So it was good to meet Ravi Krishnan, chief executive of MRCB on a zoom call recently after some publicity came our way on an apartment building on the Gold Coast touted to strive for some high sustainability features.
We were curious. It turns out the building will be fully electric and have several other positive green features.
But the surprise was the rest of Krishnan’s story.
Ravi Krishnan, chief executive, MRCB
His company perhaps better known as Malaysian Resources Corporation Berhad, is the developer of the huge KL Sentral in Kuala Lumper that’s been unfolding over the past 20 years and which has been a testing ground for sustainability features.
Built over a disused rail yard that became a “live rail yard” it’s a mixed use precinct that hosts Google, Microsoft and a bunch of other multinationals, effectively drawing the previous CBD its way.
Many of the buildings, some designed by Australian architects, pioneered green building ratings and feature cross ventilation, “very little airconditioning and large space open spaces” Krishnan says.
The high residential component, offices, hotels, shopping centre and seven major transport connection points including rapid mass transport (MRT) and a driverless train to the airport makes it a classic live work and play location, he says.
Melbourne’s E-Gate a missed opportunity
It’s the kind of precinct the company hoped to replicate in Melbourne when came to Australia in 2014. It had its eye on a 25 hectare site on a disused rail yard at Docklands, between North Melbourne Station and Footscray Road in Melbourne.
Dubbed E-Gate, the site was earmarked by his company as a centre of education, with educational providers lined up alongside a proposal for a rail link to the airport, but the plans fell foul of a change of government.
“We went through a tender process twice, and then there’s a change of government and the whole thing had to be shelved. But we’re still very actively looking towards the day when it will come back. Because that’s the sort of scale we do.”
Innovation
In Malaysia, the company has staked its reputation as an innovator, at KL Sentral introducing district cooling, and now pioneering low emissions concrete and an ambitious modular concrete construction system.
Krishnan explains: “It’s basically a concrete apartment built on site, next to where we want to build the building, and then it’s lifted up by one of the biggest cranes in the world.”
Already 20 apartments have been trialled.
Testing is underway to create aerated concrete to make it lighter and lower the embodied carbon.
There’s huge pressure to produce thousands of homes, “to lift people,” Krishnan says.
“So they have to be affordable and to be affordable you need to build mass, and they’ve got to be close to transport, so you cut people’s car dependency.”
Methods of construction are not very different from Australia’s he says. But there is a big reliance on concrete instead of steel, which is very expensive in Asia. But also for cultural reasons. People like to feel the solidity of concrete “when they tap on the walls”. They don’t like plasterboard, he says.
Sustainability
Key to the precinct he says is the embedded sustainability of location and its mixed use nature, reducing the need for travel.
“We’ve always focused on this transport orientation, for work, and for play and for living. It forms part of our very strong ethos on ESG.
“We’ve been down this ESG path a lot longer than many other companies in the world.
“In fact, we just had a strategy meeting where we are totally committed to attaining the standards for ESG as per the UN guidelines on everything that we do. So that flows into our engineering department because we build things like the MRT.”
The next project
In Australia, while he waits for the mood for an E-Gate to hopefully improve, Krishanan has been busy with two completed residential projects at Burwood and Carnegie – both well located near transport and facilities and the Gold Coast building to get off the ground.
At the new project at he’s locked in a good location which is very high on his list of embedded sustainability.
It’s close to the G:link tram line, set to be extended, a university and the beach just 150 metres down the road. Interestingly the building will not try to outperform on the level of amenities it offers.
“We try to say to our residents, we don’t really want to start an amenities war. We don’t want to out-amenity the next guy, you know, more sauna rooms, more this more that. We just want to provide enough.
“Because we are Tier 1 builders we understand concrete. So, we’ve always emphasised, don’t build anything that we don’t need because that’s a lot of mess that we don’t need to clean up. You need to design very efficiently. Everything from the number of lifts…to basement space.”
But the all-electric decision wasn’t easy. “That gave its own challenges because of the power that needs to come into the building.”
Outlook for Queensland
More broadly he says Queensland is a good location.
“I think there’s a net migration number of 30,000 – that’s a lot of people to house.”
Plus the Gold Coast has changed, he says, reinventing itself “from being a pure tourist play area, to education and health”.
There’s also “a whole generation of people who don’t have to live in a particular area to carry out their professional work. The footloose industries.”
Housing outlook
During his years here Krishnan has formed some interesting views about Australia’s embedded challenges, especially on affordable and social housing – and of course, transport.
Being close to transport is key to good development, he says, but it’s a shame that Australia for some reason has not picked up on the benefits of buses. So easy, big or small and now possible to be called on demand.
Right now he says, things might look bleak in the housing market.
“Covid smashed us and people are now very reluctant to start again. I mean, I know the developers; we talk to them, they’re looking. But it’s hard to make the numbers stack up because the cost of building has gone through the roof.”
One large developer he knows who normally has 5000 apartments on the go at any one time currently has none.
But immigration is set to soar again and put pressure on the market once more. With numbers of more than 200,000 a year forecast and 40 per cent heading to Sydney and Melbourne, that’s about 70-80,000 a year quite possibly heading north. That’s more than 1500 a week, he notes.
That’s a target he admits is not going to be achieved.
Affordable housing “we’re not that different”
As for affordable housing yes it’s an intractable problem.
“If I knew the answer, I’d be a millionaire. No, I think it’s not a simple solution.”
But, he adds: it’s not unique and other countries have found solutions.
“We need to look at ways it’s been done successfully in the past, overseas. Because we’re not that different.”
He points to the inclusionary zoning in the UK that can mandate affordable housing to 40 per cent or even 50 per cent of the site depending on location.
We need to look at ways affordable housing has been done successfully in the past, overseas. Because we’re not that different
“You know, everybody says ‘we can’t make the deal work, blah, blah, blah’, but they do [make it work].”
In New York, where the market is “just crazy” there are housing credits, and air rights that housing associations and funds receive, and which can be sold to raise capital.
“They can use them to build. So inclusionary housing credits. Yes, we’re doing a project there. We learned all about this. So we could buy from them and get higher density.”
It’s one of the first cities in the world, he notes, with no height limits.
And yet New York even with its massive heights does not feel claustrophobic at street level. (The huge public footpaths we guess.)
“And 10 minutes away by subway, you have the suburbs; with a whole community by itself. Everything is self sufficient; the schools are there; kids still walk to school, churches.
“Yet in Melbourne, we are so worried about density.”
In Singapore an even more interesting method had delivered enormous numbers of public housing without stigma attached.
People might pay rent for a decade then buy their apartment.
And if you can’t buy you could rent for life.
“There’s not a social barrier; you are not a social bludger.”
According to Wikipedia as of 2020, 78.7 per cent of Singapore residents live in public housing.
But when the flats are sold then proceeds are ploughed back into public housing. “You regenerate. And you use the cash to build some more.”
The problem with our state governments here is we’ve depleted our talent and our talent is outsourced
The problem with our state governments here is we’ve depleted our talent and our talent is outsourced. But in Australia, Krishnan observes, no government would be able to produce thousands of dwellings now. “They’ve always left it to the private sector. Whether it’s a Labor government, or a Liberal government.
“The problem with our state governments here is we’ve depleted our talent and our talent is outsourced.
“They say ‘that’s not what we do. But that is what you’re supposed to do.”
There are a lot of charities in Australia, he observes, but as someone he knows recently said:
“Charity is a failure of government”.