Add more products
The construction industry has long been known for its consumption of raw materials and natural resources. And fair enough - you can’t build much without materials. But where once the image of construction material usage was one of unfettered depletion, it has now been replaced by one that puts sustainability front and centre.
Read More
The age of the circular economy is here, and that means when it comes to the product lifecycle, things are no longer linear. A circular economy is a production and consumption model, where materials are reused whenever possible rather than discarded to landfill. For Knauf globally, sustainability is a ‘Must Win Battle’, and one of the company’s key targets is to become a leader in the circular economy.
While in some sectors fierce debate rages on about the positive impacts of emerging technologies, it’s safe to say that, for the most part, automated systems in buildings have been relatively uncontroversial. That’s because even though people may disagree about what the best technology is for a certain problem, everyone’s generally in agreement that technology - as a whole - has significantly improved the efficiency, performance, and utility of our buildings.
“Most people are familiar with the COP events. COP21, known as the Paris Agreement, is the most significant and led to a new international climate agreement, applicable to all countries, aiming to curtail global warming at 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” Aidan Mullen, Sustainability Manager at Interface, says.
With the recent IPCC report highlighting the need for urgency in taking drastic climate action, Interface is re-examining their plan and ramping up their activities. We sit down with Aidan Mullan to talk about what’s in the pipeline, why it needs to happen now, and why carbon offsetting is not a silver bullet.
It’s a well known (and for the most part, extremely accurate) trope that Australians are obsessed with property. For many, the dream of owning their own home is still front of mind, even as the price of realising that dream continues to grow - with little sign of ever stopping!
The single dwelling home has long been the cornerstone of Australian architecture. From double-brick semis in the inner west of Sydney to the iconic verandah-wrapped airiness of the Queenslander, single dwelling architecture is a place where familiarity and quintessential Aussie-ness resides.
As the price of land remains at a premium around the country (despite the prevailing macroeconomic conditions), it seems certain that higher density residential projects will become key to the future livability of our urban areas. In every major Australian city we’ve long seen innovative projects that go far beyond the traditional ‘block of flats’ stereotype.
Public buildings are a particularly interesting sub-sector of architecture for the mere fact that there are few sectors in which the heritage of the buildings in question regularly spans the full 200+ year colonial history of our country.
Just south-west of Warwick in the picturesque Darling Downs region of QLD, a huge sustainability project is currently underway. With a total investment of AU$1.96 billion, the 1,026MW MacIntyre Wind Farm Precinct will become the biggest wind farm in Australia, one of the largest onshore wind farms in the world, and a crucial part of the Queensland Government’s decarbonisation strategy.
Education and research facilities exist on a vast spectrum and, as such, their sustainability profiles and the trends that are shaping their design can vary greatly. The design approach for a kindergarten classroom would vary substantially from that of a biotech laboratory, for example.
As we emerge from the pandemic and life returns to ‘normal’, few sectors of architecture are experiencing as much change as the commercial one. Shifts to the ways people work, both in their locations and in their preferences for the built environment, are inspiring some pretty drastic reappraisals of what constitutes a good commercial building.
