Brickworks Living Building Challenge

“Imagine a building designed and constructed to function as elegantly and efficiently as a flower: a building informed by its bioregion’s characteristics, that generates all of its own energy with renewable resources, captures and treats all of its water, is toxic free and beautiful.”

– The Living Future Institute of Australia

Now, consider that global aspiration in the context of a retail centre not in the US or Europe, but in suburban Melbourne, Australia.

This is the opportunity presented by the Living Future Institute of Australia (LFIA) and its principal partner Frasers Property Australia, with the company’s Brickworks retail project in Burwood to be the focus of the world’s most aspirational and rigorous green building performance standard – the Living Building Challenge.

Opening for registration on February 18 and formally launched in Melbourne on March 3, the Brickworks Living Building Challenge design competition invites designers, professionals, environmental experts, students and anyone interested in a cleaner, regenerative future to submit their ideas and help re-imagine the possibilities when it comes to the design of retail centres.

The design competition will be launched in Melbourne via webcast and feature some of the world’s most renowned sustainable design names. It presents a simple question to built environment professionals and enthusiasts the world over:

What does the world’s most sustainable retail centre look like?

Stephen Choi, Vice-Chair of the Living Future Institute of Australia, welcomes the retail project to pursue the Living Building Challenge.

“Retail is a sector regrettably grounded in excess and waste. Shopping centre signs buzz at night, instore mannequins are individually lit long after the customers have gone home, and we have somehow got to a point where we call natural daylight and fresh air ‘best practice’. In terms of how we design and build, it’s a sector in need of a fundamental shift and that is what the Living Building Challenge aims to deliver,” Mr Choi says.

“For the 2016 Brickworks Living Building Challenge competition, we are casting a global net in an attempt to dramatically raise the bar from a paradigm of doing less harm when we build, to one in which we view our role as steward and co-creator of a true living future.

“This challenge is a first in a number of respects: the Living Building Challenge has never before had a retail centre as its centrepiece, nor has an Australian project been subject to such a design competition.

“Frasers Property Australia has shown that to be truly progressive you must aspire to create outcomes beyond those previously accepted as best practice. We commend Frasers Property for

partnering with us and we look forward to seeing the different design possibilities for the Brickworks site,” he says.

The International Living Future Institute, the parent organisation to LFIA, is an environmental nonGovernment organisation headquartered in Seattle, USA, that is committed to catalyzing the transformation toward communities that are socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative. The Living Building Challenge is one of its key visionary programs.

“The International Living Future Institute is premised on the belief that providing a compelling vision for the future is a fundamental requirement for reconciling humanity’s relationship with the natural world. It is inspiring to see companies like Frasers Property committed to transforming the built environment,” says Amanda Sturgeon, CEO of the Institute.

Peri Macdonald, General Manager – Retail, Frasers Property Australia, says making the Brickworks site the focus of the Living Building Challenge aims to unlock new possibilities in sustainable design in retail.

“Frasers Property is aspiring not only to create the world’s most sustainable retail centre, but a project that actually generates a net positive, regenerative impact on the environment. Ideally the challenge will uncover the kind of progressive design that will enable us to achieve our aspirations,” explains Mr Macdonald.

“This design competition is not just about using tools or securing ratings, it invites design teams, professionals, students and anyone else interested to not just think outside the square, but re-invent the box.

“We are calling on extraordinary people to think boldly,” he says.

Entries, to be judged by a panel of industry experts, will award innovative designs that embrace true and holistic sustainability through the retail centre’s lifetime. The closing date will be May 6 and there will be technical and procedural help on hand throughout the submission period.

The winner will be announced in June 2016 and will share in prize money totaling more than $30,000.

To further differentiate it from traditional sustainable design competitions, local primary schools will also have the opportunity to participate – and make their school more sustainable in the process.

“We’re opening the challenge to students in primary schools local to the site who will have the opportunity to win solar panels for their school and create a legacy for the project,” Mr Choi says.

“Inspiration can come from anywhere and making the challenge open to young minds might just unlock some truly different thinking. That’s what the Living Building Challenge is about.”

For further information visit https://living-future.org.au/the-brickworks-living-building-challengedesign-competition/