With parallel sessions and keynote speakers<\/a> on each day, topics explored the need to retrofit existing housing stock for heatwave resilience<\/a>, the SAMBA IEQ monitoring system<\/a>, performative guidelines for the 21st century park<\/a> and policy consideration of the increasing impact of embodied energy on a building’s life cycle energy demand.<\/a><\/p>\n The Chair, Chris Jensen, opened the conference by posing to \u2018look across the globe to Paris and ask are we doing enough?\u2019 Regenerative design, climate change resilience, new technologies and a call for improved standards for building and urban performance featured as themes throughout.<\/p>\n Keynote: Professor Brian Dunbar<\/strong><\/p>\n Professor Brian Dunbar, Executive Director of the Institute for the Built Environment (IBE), Colorado State University, outlined IBE\u2019s philosophy of taking research to practice, elaborating upon the multi-disciplinary nature of the faculty which includes sociologists, landscape architects and construction managers. IBE\u2019s mission is \u2018to advance the development of healthy thriving built environments\u2019. Professor Dunbar shared projects that related to five focal areas (the respective linked resources are publicly available documents):<\/p>\n Keynote: Professor Donald Bates<\/strong> Professor Donald Bates, LAB Architecture Studio, presented two case studies illustrating the concept of \u2018multiple benefits out of solving multiple issues\u2019.<\/p>\n A sustainable whole-of-precinct approach (SWOPA) guided the unsolicited idea of the Birrarung Pools<\/a> project in Batman Park, Melbourne. The proposed pool draws upon the precinct’s resource opportunities to meet some of the operational needs of a new pool. Discussion with the neighbouring Casino and Aquarium identified the need to discharge excess heat and hot water from these respective buildings and rainwater collection was identified from the roofs of the adjoining Crowne Plaza hotel and North Bank. Replacing the existing European style garden bank with indigenous planting provides an on-site filter bed. Birrarung Pools offers a design response that draws upon concepts of industrial ecology in meeting the identified facility gap of a public pool in the south of the CBD.<\/p>\n In revisiting design solutions incorporated at Melbourne\u2019s Federation Square<\/a>, Bates described how \u2018every decision is a set of multiple decisions\u2019.\u00a0Key to the cooling strategy was the labyrinth – a passive cooling system comprised of a maze of corrugated concrete walls situated beneath the plaza in an otherwise unused sloping space. Cool air from the Yarra River on the south of the site passes through and is absorbed by the articulated wall surfaces of the labyrinth. The concrete walls also act as a structural device to support the plaza above the railway deck. This dual function eliminated the need to introduce steel and also reduced consultant costs resulting from the reduced scope of mechanical services.\u00a0Combined with a displacement system to deliver the cooled air at floor level, a significant reduction in energy is achieved for the complex.<\/p>\n Drivers and barriers to heatwave-resilient building retrofitting in the Australian context<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Gertrud Hatvani-Kovacs shared analysis of a survey into perception of, adaptation to and retrofitting against heatwaves in Adelaide. Given one of three heatwave-related deaths occurs indoors (Coates et al., 2014) and a relatively slow building stock turnover rate, retrofitting of existing housing stock for population resilience against heatwaves was proposed as essential. The results indicated that the majority of the existing residential building stock was not heatwave-resilient and the occupants were not willing to retrofit. Key barriers included the expense of retrofitting measures, being a tenant and a lack of knowledge. The most prevalent retrofitting measure was air-conditioning, followed by improved shading of the house. Increased garden vegetation and changing the roof colour were underrepresented retrofitting measures, suggesting future retrofit programs should promote these less popular, highly efficient retrofitting interventions.<\/p>\n Introducing the SAMBA indoor environmental quality monitoring system<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n A shift in focus from crude energy metrics to a more nuanced indoor environment quality (IEQ) performance has given rise to the evolution of technology to measure IEQ. Richard de Dear presented SAMBA – small, low-cost, desk-based monitors with sensors for thermal comfort (air and radiant temperatures, air speed and humidity), acoustics (SPL), lighting (lux) and air quality (CO2, CO, TVOC, Formaldehyde and PM10). Acknowledging that expense has been a bottleneck to a more widespread use of IEQ performance ratings such as NABERS IE, SAMBA can deploy multiple devices across multiple floors to provide a very clear picture in real time of a building\u2019s IEQ, autonomous of an organisation\u2019s wi-fi system. SAMBA provides a welcome evolution in IEQ measurement.<\/p>\n Designing the 21st\u00a0century urban park: design strategies for a warming climate<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Jillian Walliss presented an explorative comparison of Singapore\u2019s Gardens by the Bay and Taiwan\u2019s Phase Shifts Park as contemporary open space designs with performative attributes. A shift towards performative attributes for open space is identified as an emerging trend. For instance New York introduced High Performance Landscape Guidelines: 21st Century Parks for NYC in 2011. Catherine Mosbach and Phillip Rahm\u2019s Phase Shifts Park, due for completion in 2016, aims to provide a comfortable and healthy outdoor environment by creating a diversity of conditions including cooling climatic devices, planting regimes and ultrasonic speakers to keep mosquitos away. This approach represents a merging of technological and biological performance in response to climate conditions such as high humidity and poor air quality. As it becomes increasingly hard to inhabit external space under adverse climate conditions and a changing climate, a shift towards improving the performance of parks and open space is predicted to become more common, as demonstrated in these Asian examples.<\/p>\n Does current policy on building energy efficiency reduce a building\u2019s life cycle energy demand?<\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n Robert Crawford questioned a\u00a0current policy focus on thermal performance in light of the increasing proportional impact of embodied energy on building energy efficiency. Referencing COAG\u2019s National Strategy on Energy Efficiency statement\u00a0that \u2018six, seven and eight star buildings, or equivalent, will become the norm in Australia, not the exception\u2019, Crawford posits that a \u2018business as usual focus on thermal improvements may be at its limit\u2019. The paper investigated the life cycle primary energy repercussions of increasing building energy efficiency levels over 50 years for a case study house in Melbourne and Brisbane. Energy efficiency is improved by material or design changes as well as a combination of both. The results revealed that \u2018design changes result in the greatest benefit\u2019 – reducing both operational and embodied energy requirements simultaneously. Material changes alone resulted in an increased life cycle energy demand in Brisbane and negligible life cycle energy benefits in Melbourne. The paper\u00a0calls for a more comprehensive approach in policy on housing energy efficiency that considers embodied energy and encourages a design approach to energy performance.<\/p>\n For further information on embodied energy in buildings, refer to the free EDG note Life Cycle Energy Analysis<\/a>\u00a0by Robert Crawford.<\/p>\n All 2015 papers can be viewed here<\/a>.\n
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\nAbstracts are currently being sought for the 2016 ASA conference here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"