It has been argued that the greenest building, is one that is already built. After all, most of the materials employed in pre-existing buildings have already been extracted and processed. However, it’s also been calculated that nearly half of all construction industry output in developed countries goes into the repair and adaptation of existing buildings. Setting aside the issue of operational energy used throughout a buildings life cycle, Adaptive Reuse of buildings, at least in the construction phase, is creative eco-design. These few examples barely touch on what is possible.
Silo
Construction on Waratah Flour Mills began in 1923. Within 25 years the mill was one of NSW’s largest and most modern flouring milling operations, with its six distinctive silos towering above Sydney’s inner city suburb of Dulwich Hill. Eventually, however the mill was no longer in operation and it would fall to CPG Developments and architects Nettleton Tribe to convert the disused silos into 18 apartments over eight floors, with the nearby warehouse also renovated, yielding a total of 84 residences. Windows were cut into the concrete silo walls, with new curved balconies added, that look as if they were simply swung out from walls. Winner of a 2003 award for adaptive re-use in development, Waratah Mills is now slated to be one of nine stops on an extended light rail service from Sydney’s CBD, as well as part of a Green Corridor of regenerated bushland and cycleways. Other silo adaptations can be found in Newtown, Richmond, Hobart and Bunbury.
Shipping Container
Section 8, is the loophole that Klinger from the TV series M*A*S*H was always trying to exploit for a discharge due to insanity. It’s also the name of bar in Melbourne that exhibits its own form of wacky behaviour, by transforming two shipping containers into a trendy urban watering hole. Plonked in what was a vacant block used for car parking, Section 8 comprises one container as the bar, and another as the toilet and storeroom. Large holes cut into the sides of the container form the actual bar, with the hatch openings doing double service as awnings. Initial set up was managed for about $60,000. The Australian Interior Design Award winning firm of DireTribe Studio (since disbanded) assisted with the industrial look of the decor, which includes seating fashioned from shipping pallets. The raw look of the buildings and associated furniture suits the location in Tattersalls Lane in the heart of the city.
Factory
Warehouses and factories are almost ideal spaces for innovative reuse. Their expansive open plan interiors housed large machinery or vast storage. These vaulted spaces now provide a form of blank canvas on which designers and architects can paint a fresh history. We could’ve selected any number of examples, for this section but were drawn to the renovation of the Crago Flour Mill in the inner city Sydney suburb of Newtown for its careful retention of the industrial artifacts from the buildings previous life, along with its original timber floors, structural steel, masonry walls and windows. In operation for 90 years as a wheat milling factory from its erection in 1896, the building then spent 20 years asa artist workshops before being fashioned by Architects Allen Jack & Cottier and construction firm Built P/L into 47 commercial studio offices. The Crago Flourmill won a 2008 MBA Excellence in Construction Award for Adaptive Re-use of an Historic building.
Churches
Often small country churches are resurrected as rural residences. Also common is for churches to find new life as restaurants, as is the case in Brisbane, Glebe, North Mackay, Tintenbar, and North Adelaide, and no doubt many others besides. It is more unusual for former places of worship to be turned into suites of luxury apartments. But that is the case with Cairns Memorial Presbyterian Church in East Melbourne. Construction of the buttressed and pinnacled sandstone church commenced in 1883, and almost 100 years later it was added to the Register of the National Estate, by the Australian Heritage Commission in 1980. Only eights later however the interior of the church burnt to the ground. The sandstone shell was found to be sound and in the mid nineties this stone outer wall provided the structural olde world facade for a series of luxury apartments that were constructed within and sheathed in modern plate glass.
Power Station
Oftentimes building adaptions are so successful that we can easily imagine their current use has always been thus, and we give a building’s earlier history little thought. Sydney’s iconic Powerhouse Museum maybe one such example. Although opened back in 1988, the museum; Australia’s largest and most popular, with a collection of over 385,000 objects, occupies a building with an even older heritage. Originally built almost 100 years prior, the Ultimo power station generated steam power to run Sydney's new electric tram system at the turn of the previous century. When trams ceased running in 1961, the building was decommissioned a few years later and left vacant, until given a makeover by Lionel Glendenning, then Principal Architect (Public Buildings) for the NSW Department of Public Works. Glendenning’s adaption utilised the old power station’s large spaces like the boiler and engine halls to house large exhibits like a Catalina flying boat, a a Locomotive and Boulton and Watt steam engine.
Prison
Much of the well known Pentridge Prison is considered “historically, socially, aesthetically, architecturally and technically important.” This is prison where the famous bushranger, Ned Kelly, is buried, and where Australia’s last hanging occurred in 1967. Having operated for just shy of 150 years, before being decommissioned in 1997, Pentridge’s fortress-like bluestone walls give it a rather foreboding appearance. Possibly one reason why its adaptation to a new urban hub for the suburb of Coburg has not been entirely straightforward. Moreland City Council have approved residential dwellings, offices, shops and a supermarket for the proposed Pentridge Piazza, with more of the same envisaged for the nearby Pentridge Village redevelopment. However, developers have experienced financial hurdles, including millions lost in delays as Heritage Victoria exhumed prisoners' remains. If all eventually goes to plan, much of the heritage buildings will be retained, along with about 90% of those notorious blue-stone walls.
Water Tower
Riddel Architecture have recently received a lot of coverage for their extensive renovation of a house in Brisbane’s Hill End, where 80% of the old home was reused in the new. But it is their much earlier adaptation of water reservoir tank in the suburb of Balmoral that interests us here. The water tower was built during the World War Two years as a gravity feed town water supply. With its massive circular structure (12 metre high and 22 metre internal diameter), the structure deemed too expensive to demolish, especially as the concrete in its base approaches 1 metre in thickness. So Riddel Architecture designed window and balcony openings to be cut in the upper most section of tower. Rooms were suspended within the structure, offering not only scenic exterior views but a covered internal courtyard set off by the original central support column. Exposed concrete and retained industrial pipes provide a old/new atmosphere.
Train
The Crossing Land Education Centre is perched on the bush banks of the Bermagui River, in the far south coast of NSW. It serves as an outdoor education facility for young people with a strong focus on sustainability. The green lifestyle education extends well beyond the adrenaline of human powered outdoor activities, into permaculture and eco-design. The Centre leads this education by example. It’s first structure was a remodelled Bedford bus that became the Director’s bedroom and office. A kitchen was built around the exterior of the bus, which sits as a rather striking feature wall, at one end of the dining area. Later a derelict 1930's red rattler train carriage was trucked up from Victoria and carefully poised upon massive tree trunk posts. Many hours of volunteer labour followed until the train finally metamorphosed into the centre’s bunkhouse accommodation. Students learn about sustainable design by literally living in it.
