Green Building Summit 2009

Innovation in Green Design

• Shane Esmore - Umow Lai, VIC, Australia
• Francois Garde - Reunion Island, France

 Shane Esmore began by suggesting that the market is driving us to up the ante and that we need move beyond Green Star.  This meant that we should look past just the rating towards carbon neutrality and the life cycle impacts of our buildings.  He produced many examples of buildings that are already pushing the boundaries of the Green Star tools (indeed a few of the buildings he is working on currently are attempting to achieve 100% of the Green Star points in Australia).

He showed examples of buildings that went back to the roots of passive solar designs including those that use labyrinths (or rockbins as thermal stores), double skin facades and the use of night cooling to reduce the need for mechanical cooling during the day.

Shane reiterated the need to include in your analysis of the benefits of these buildings the improved satisfaction, well-being and productivity of the staff and not to look at just the simple pay backs.

He finished of nicely with a simple formula that natural = cheaper.

Francois Garde's discussion centred around Net Zero Energy Buildings.  Basically buildings that produce as much energy as they use, thus reducing the need for increases in power station sizes and reducing our draw on the national grid. His message was simple - before trying to generate your own power through the use of Renewable Energy systems get back to basics and use a first principles approach to designing your building.

He showed examples of simple cross naturally ventilated buildings with ceiling fans to improve the air circulation.  He also touched on some of the simple tools we now have that can help us design our buildings with attention the natural environment (solar shading for example) such as Sketchup with its energy, daylight and acoustic plugins.

Again Francois echoed Shane's thoughts that we just need to get back to basics.

Reviewed by Quentin Jackson, eCubed Building Workshop, who facilitated the session.