The Living Future Institute of Australia has announced its inaugural Living Building Challenge design competition, which asks participants to design a sustainable shopping centre that meets rigorous environmental standards.
The building will be required to incorporate measures that make it self-sustaining, such as generating all of its own energy and capturing and treating its own water.
The competition is open to both built environment professionals and students, and a total prize pool of $30,000 is available across multiple categories.
The competition, the Brickworks Living Building Challenge, centres around the international building certification tool Living Building Challenge, which was started in the USA and Canada. The tool, often described as the strictest in the world, consists of seven performance categories, or “petals”, including place, water, energy, health and happiness, equity, materials and beauty. Each of the performance categories is subdivided into twenty imperatives.
The Brickworks Living Building Challenge represents the first time that an Australian building has been involved in a Living Building Challenge design competition, and the first time the building certification tool has been applied to a retail development.
Two completed projects in Australia are pursuing Living Building Challenge certification by demonstrating their self-sustaining capacities, including the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute by Hassell and the University of Wolloongong’s Sustainable Buildings Research Centre by Cox Richardson.
The competition site is a 20.5-hectare former brickworks site in the suburb of Burwood, in Melbourne’s east, which is being developed by Frasers Property Australia (formerly called Australand). Last August, the Victorian state government fast-tracked the rezoning of the site to pave the way for a $500 million development to go ahead. Frasers Property Australia is a competition partner.
The overall project for the site includes a mix of retail and residential development. The design competition is for a 12,000-square-metre retail centre that will be integrated with a proposed town square. The retail centre will encapsulate a supermarket, specialty shops, a child care facility, a pharmacy and a medical centre.
New Zealand retirement village developer Ryman Healthcare recently acquired part of the brickworks site from Frasers Property Australia.
In the competition’s professional category, the winner will receive a $15,000 cash prize, the runner-up $5,000 and two people’s choice/commendations will each receive $2,500. The student category has a cash award of $3,000 on offer for the winner and $1,000 each for two commendations.
The closing date for submissions is 6 May, and the winners will be announced in June 2016.
To learn more about the competition, visit living-future.org.au/the-brickworks-living-building-challenge-design-competition/.
