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When it comes to driving greater sustainability practices across their campuses and communities, many Australian universities and schools are making a significant mark.
This week, the University of Wollongong was recognised for its efforts in a big way when it received full marks under the world’s toughest sustainability standard for buildings, the Living Building Challenge (LBC).
Administered by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), certifies projects that meet ambitious green building performance standards through a framework of “Petals” around categories that include Energy, Materials, and Water.
Completed in 2013, the University’s Sustainable Buildings Research Centre (SBRC) is referred to as “a haven for research and industry collaborations with the goal to make all buildings sustainable”.
The building also has 6-Star Green Star certification and includes 468 solar panels to support net zero energy, an onsite rainwater system to enable net zero water performance, and use of environmentally safe and reused building materials.
Living Certification under the LBC means the SBRC building is the 1st Living Certified Building in Australia; 24th Living Certified project in the world; 3rd Living Certified project outside the United States and the first project in Australia to achieve any level of LBC certification.
SBRC Director Senior Professor Paul Cooper said the research centre’s design was based on the LBC regenerative design framework aimed at creating “living” buildings that make a positive impact on our society and our environment overall.
“The building has been carefully designed to generate positive health and wellbeing through a restorative and healthy coexistence with nature, including the use of green walls and native plants, creating a strong connection between the building occupants and the landscape,” Professor Cooper said.
“From day one, I said to the design team that we wanted to create a building that went way beyond the current benchmark for sustainable buildings. We believe society as a whole needs to do much better than that.”
To earn the accolade, the SBRC building was tested against stringent performance standards and metrics covering energy use, site utilisation, health and happiness, equity, beauty, water and materials used.
“We had to track every single item and material that came into the building as part of construction,” Professor Cooper said, adding no ‘red list’ materials – formaldehyde, chromium, mercury, PVC, for example – are allowed during the building process.
“None of the materials or pieces of equipment or building elements are allowed to have red list materials unless an exemption has been given,” Professor Cooper said.
“There were also sourcing restrictions on the building materials, for example steel and concrete could be sourced from no more than 500km away, to limit ‘embodied’ carbon emissions and environmental impact due to transport of the construction materials to site.”
Situated at the Innovation Campus, the centre’s Exhibition Foyer is open to the public during work hours.
“It is hoped people will explore the building and gardens and be inspired to design their homes using similar principles,” Professor Cooper said.