Sustainable Architecture

This category recognises projects which excel as architecture, and also display innovation and excellence in terms of environmental sustainability.

Jury chair report

Architecture and the making of buildings is a slow process even when it is fast.

As professionals, we increasingly find the context for designing responsible buildings shifting around us due to the impacts of global economic shifts and geo-political events –accelerating design technologies and digital immersions, changing energy and industry landscapes, a reckoning with Australia’s colonial past, the impacts of global warming through catastrophic events, and Australia’s increasing urban expansion and population growth.

It’s hard, and things around us are moving very, very fast.

The jury was presented with a self-selected array of projects that represented a range of typologies and scales. Even with a stringent checklist, the jury found that while many of this year’s projects addressed sustainability concerns adequately, and certain points with excellence, we still have a considerable way to go as a profession in relation to net zero carbon reduction targets set for 2030.

While we acknowledge the accelerating rate of change in the industry and the lingering effects of the global pandemic, and as architects preoccupied with creating responsible projects and who understand the varying complexities, we do feel that as a profession we need to move faster.

We were pleased to see projects demonstrating the power architects hold to influence clients towards better and braver decisions. We have the power to advocate for better policy. Our purchasing power has already changed the way suppliers talk about their products, and indeed the products on offer. We can start these conversations, and we often find people are very happy to have them and take the conversation further.

The awarded and commended projects demonstrate varied, individual approaches to more responsible architecture, and all excel in their own approach. For next year’s awards, we hope to see various strategies combined, resulting in truly holistic design approaches.

Category sponsor

The Allan and Beth Coldicutt Award for Sustainable Architecture Nightingale Village by Architecture architecture, Austin Maynard Architects, Breathe, Clare Cousins Architects, Hayball and Kennedy Nolan

Wurundjeri Country

While the Nightingale model, with its restrained material palette and shared facilities, is already highly lauded, the jury felt that this project, which escalates the scale of the model to the village precinct delivers outstanding results. These impacts are felt across both the industry and people’s day-to-day lives.

The jury was impressed with Nightingale Village as an example of leadership and action in the face of global warming, with the architects selforganising to overcome established market expectations and lending parameters to deliver a precinct of high social and environmental quality. They demonstrate the meaning that can be derived when we are free to challenge commercial models.

Including a wide range of Melbourne’s architects in the project promotes new models of collaboration and reflects a certain generosity. It ensures the dissemination of knowledge relating to delivering environmentally responsible buildings through the local design community. The range of practices involved in the project also resulted in a diversity of ideas including dog runs, bath houses, bookable guest suites and precinct resource management. This project considers the social life of the people that live there, encouraging delight in lower footprint living behaviours through minimal car usage, electrification and shared facilities.

Practice team: Nick James (Design Architect), Michael Roper (Design Architect), Daria Selleck (Project Architect), Mark Austin (Design Architect), Andrew Maynard (Design Architect), Mark Stranan (Design Architect), Jeremy McLeod (Design Architect), Madeline Sewall (Project Architect), Frances McLennan (Graduate of Architecture), Bettina Robinson (Project team), Fairley Batch (Project team), Bonnie Herring (Project team), Ali Galbraith (Project team), Emily McBain (Project team), Giles Freeman (Project team), Marie Penny (Project Team), Mark Ng (Project team), Patricia Bozyk (Project team), Renee Eleni Agudelo (Project team), Sarah Mealey (Project team), Shannon Furness (Project team), Clare Cousins (Design Architect), Oliver Duff Project Architect), Tara Ward (Project Architect), Candice Chan (Project Architect), Laura Norris-Jones (Project Manager), Luc Baldi (Project Director), Rob Stent (Design Director/ Architect), Bianca Hung (Director (Interiors), James Luxton (Project Architect), Gianni Iacobaccio (Senior CAD Technician), Robert Mosca (Project Architect), Yuyuen Low (Architect), Saifee Akil (Architect), Ela Rajapackiyam (BIM Technician), Patrick Kennedy (Principal), Rachel Nolan (Principal), Michael Macleod (Director), Victoria Reeves (Director), Elizabeth Campbell (Project Architect), Tamara Veltre (Project team), Oliver Monk (Architect)

Consultant / Construction team: Hansen Partnerships (Urban Planner), WT Partnerships (Quantity Surveyor), WSP (Engineer), Steve Watson & Partners (Building Surveyor), Access Studio (Access Consultant), WSP (ESD Consultant), Umow Lai (ESD Consultant), Olax Pty Ltd (Wayfinding), Tree Logic (Arborist), GTA Consultants (Traffic), Leigh Design (Waste Management), Openwork (Landscape and Urban Design), Amanda Oliver Gardens (Landscape Consultant), Eckersley Garden Architecture (Landscape Consultant), Fontic (Project Manager), Hansen Partnership(Town Planner), Breathe (Urban Design), Andy Fergus (Urban Design), Hip v Hype Sustainability (ESD Consultant)

Builder: Hacer Group

Photographer: Tom Ross

Enthusiastically leading the way, the architects of ANMF House took the client on a journey to invest in a holistic approach to sustainability through economic wholeof-life considerations. ANMF House demonstrates how sustainability can be integrated throughout a project without abrupt cultural change through considered design, streamlined construction and comfortable operation.

ANMF House’s multiple initiatives resonated with the jury, through its sustainable commercial development process, Passivhaus design, its sensitive integration into built heritage and focus on occupant wellbeing, primarily ANMF’s extensive nursing and care workers.

Nestled in the dense city fabric, the project maintains and adapts the existing pub facade, revived on-site timber, and carefully selected, low-embodied energy materials further help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The carbonsequestering Cross Laminated Timber replaces traditional concrete structure, expressed and celebrated in the wellconsidered interiors. Encompassed by a high-performing facade envelope providing thermal and acoustic comfort, occupants rest in the calm environment and directly experience its timber skeleton. Urban food production and indigenous planting on the rooftop enhance the genuine engagement