ZAHA HADID GOES GREEN DOWN UNDER

 

by Jorge Chapa

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We don’t often bring news of projects without at least an inkling of the actual design, but sometimes we just can’t resist: Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi Pritzker Prize winning architect, is set to design Melbourne’s, and Australia’s, greenest and probably most expensive commercial and housing complex. A tall order, considering that Melbourne is already home to CH2 and 40 Albert Road, which have been the only two buildings in the country to achieve the highest 6-star rating from the Green Building Council of Australia.

30 THE BOND: Sydney’s Greenest Building

March 19, 2007 by <!––>Jorge Chapa

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BOND, 30 THE BOND*

What’s more impressive than a building design that aims to reduce its greenhouse emissions to a 5 Star Australian Building Greenhouse Rating benchmark, which is the approximate equivalent to that of a Gold LEED greenhouse certification level? How about one which has proven to meet its target and improves on it. This is the case of the building known as 30 The Bond located at Hickson Road in Sydney.

When Lend Lease, its builder and current owner decided to create its new headquarters in Sydney it decided to hold numerous employee workshops to determine what they believed were the important priorities. Those priorities were reduction in pollutants, increase in environment quality, water management (as Australia has now been in what seems a permanent drought), waste management and a green area for them to enjoy. All of this resulted in an extremely well designed commercial building.

Green skins

June 21, 2008  www.theaustralian.news.com.au

Garden roofs and leafy walls could be crucial steps in the fight against global warming, writes Greg Callaghan.

Take one glance at images of the eye-catching ACROS building in Fukuoka City, Japan, and you’ll have no trouble believing that a 21st-century office tower can be eco-friendly. Yes, it boasts a host of energy-saving features ranging from densely insulated walls to compact fluorescent globes, but this is a building that wears Mother Nature’s theme colour on its sleeve – or more specifically, on its back. On the street entrance side, it looks like an ordinary office building, all steel and shimmering glass; at its rear it’s a 15-storey cascade of lush garden terraces pouring down to a park: a green, living oasis in a sea of dead, grey concrete.