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RESIDENTIAL SPECIAL REPORT: The residential market has been slow to move the needle on sustainability, particularly on energy performance. Now things are changing. There’s a long list of reasons why the home builder market has been slow to move on sustainability, including how it’s marketed to consumers. However, there’s promising signs that we’re on the […]
Perth’s water managers have declared that the city will be a leading “waterwise” city by 2030 but there is a lot of work to do to reach that goal, given that Perth has the second-highest per capita water consumption of any Australian capital city.
Home water recycling units may one day become as commonplace as household rooftop solar, with revolutionary domestic water recycling technology set to land in Australia soon.
At least two Australians towns, Stanthorpe in Queensland and Braidwood in NSW, have run dry and are now trucking in water at great expense. UNSW professor Stuart Khan says there’s many options to help drought-stricken towns before resorting to carted water, with some solutions more affordable and sustainable than others.
According to some critics, the statutory pricing structure around recycling is shutting out innovation. Sydney Water argues it needs to maintain commercial viability to meets its requirements to supply low cost water for all. Who’s right?
Architects are discovering that keeping some of the old features of our homes can be more sustainable than installing new materials and technology.
A “nice balance between raw original features and shiny new internals” can help occupants appreciate the original building.
When heritage buildings are no longer able to be used for their original purpose, they may be carefully converted to suit modern requirements and used in another way.
All buildings, no matter how well-intentioned and well-built, degrade over time, increasingly so with climate change.
Demolition and re-building from scratch is neither realistic nor sustainable, while re-use can help combat climate change.
Building Codes and safety standards have come a long way in the past century but that’s no reason to write-off an existing building as too hard to bring up to contemporary standards, according to Umow Lai director, Ken Loh.
Warehouse conversions for apartments have been popular for decades but the rising appetite for co-working and shared office space is seeing a new wave of conversions.
Swinburne University’s Advanced Manufacturing and Design Centre’s use of hydronics is unlike most educational buildings in Australia.