Thursday, January 13

First thing this morning we met with Steven Nichols, Development Manager for Grocon, to discuss the 161 Castlereigh project. This project is to be a 50 story office building with retail on the bottom floor. They trying to make this project the most green building in the world. They have a trigen system that will power the building, with the excess power going towards heating the water for the building. The entire building is to be fit out with LED lighting, which will drastically cut down on the energy consumption. They are still looking at using wind turbines on the roof for power generation. The way that the roof is shaped and oriented, it creates a perfect tunnel to harvest the wind. This decision still hasn’t been finalized. They had looked at incorporating a blackwater system in the building but have had bad experiences with them in their other properties, so they decided not to include one. The building is currently borderline between 5- and 6-Star rated.

Our second meeting today was with Matt Williams with Bovus at their 30 Bond office. This building was pretty cool. It incorporated a sheer sandstone wall that had been cut out by prisoners a long time ago. This wall provides temperature stability in the atrium area. The way that the building is situated, the atrium is shaded from direct sunlight, except through a glass ceiling. The sandstone wall typically produces a cool draft coming down it, so what they did was install open ventilation at the base of the wall that allows this draft to go straight down to the basement and car port. The whole area maintains such a natural stable temperature that they have only used the floor heating system twice in the buildings history. Matt also talked specifically about the two interconnected stairwells that go from floor to floor. He said that because of the convenience of these, they use 75% less energy from their elevators. The building is cooled using a chilled beam system. Essentially the room is turned into a big convection oven. The beams in the ceiling are cooled using an integrated water cooling system, the cold are drops through perforated ceiling tiles, and pushed the hotter air back up to get cooled by the chilled beams. I've never heard of this type system being used in the states, but it sounds ingenious and should be used more regularly. 

The actual office spaces for the building are built very sustainably also. The floors are made of bamboo and the carpet is made of goat hair. The chilled beams produce about 90% of the air circulation for the space, with the remaining 10% coming from vents that pull outside air. With the major facade facing west, they installed louvers that are setup on  a timer to control the amount of sunlight that is allowed into the office. From 9-12 they are up and fully open, 12-3 down but open, and 3 on they are fully closed. The building also has a green roof that the employees can utilized as a community area. However, due to complaints from adjacent high-end apartment complexes they aren't allowed to be out there after 5 because of the noise. The thing that they did have problems with after construction, is the unexpected amount of sunlight that is let in through the roof on the top floor office space. To remedy this, they had to install additional shades and screens.

The one thing I would have like to see this building do, is to incorporate some form of energy production within the building/site. I understand that PV panels would be out of the question due to the green roof, but they cold have installed a tri-generation system that would have at least used less harmful ways of producing electricity than simply pulling straight off the city's power grid.

Seeing these two buildings today, reiterates the fact that sustainable development in commercial buildings is definitely doable and effective. All of the projects that I have worked on that have been LEED certified buildings were built that way because they were public facilities and it was required. I don't think that enough people realize the true benefit of sustainable development, and not just from the financial aspect. After walking through some of the buildings on this trip, the people within them seem to be more active and think that is due to the characteristics of the building (the vast amount of natural light, the numerous "community areas", etc). As I walked through them, I thought about my own office back in Dallas and how dark and stuffy it is. It affects your attitude throughout the day, it truly does. I know that sustainable development is key to the environmental issues that becoming more and more of a concern, but let us not forget about the personal, emotional, and mental benefits of it.