The Eco-Friendly Success Story

Energy efficiency and best commercial building $5M-$10M – Fivex Commercial Property building space.

It is not connected to the sewer and relies on rain and recycling to supply its water.  Yet it is an upmarket commercial building in one of Sydney’s most expensive suburbs.

One of Australia’s most sustainable office buildings was the brainchild of Fivex Commercial Property General Manager Lesli Berger, who wanted to create a boutique office building that would set a precedent for future sustainable development.

Finished in 2006, the four-story premises on the corner of New South Head Road and Knox Street in Double Bay, has taken out Master Builders Association of NSW Excellence in Construction Awards for energy efficiency and for the best commercial building $5 million to $10 million category.

Designed by the award-winning architects Eeles Trelease and constructed by Built, the building has earned a five-star environmental rating.  It has one level of ground-floor retail and three levels of commercial officers.  Built director Graeme Hastie says the building shows that property development can succeed with a clear social conscience.  “The major challenge we faced was to maintain cost-efficiency while integrating and co-coordinating the sustainable features, many of which the project team had never combined into the one project before,” he says.

Judge Max Mosher says the building “really had an edge” over its competitors.

Berger says each detail was built with an eye to achieving sustainable development.  It has an 80,000-litre rainwater tank underneath and a black-water recycling system to treat sewage on site and re-use it for flushing toilets and watering the rooftop garden.

Glass walls on three sides, opening windows and louvers and a heat-chimney, funneled up through the fire stairs, reduce the need for air-conditioning system has been installed – much more energy efficient that standard water-cooling tower technology.  It works by varying the amount of air flowing into a given room to keep the temperature constant, rather than turning the system on and off.

Colourful internal stairs encourage staff to walk between floors rather than take the energy-hungry lift, which has been deliberately built out of the way. Mosher says people happily walk up the stairs.

The building is designed to make the most of natural light and includes an exterior shelf to bounce additional light into the building while shading the windows in summer.  Light floods in from the north, east and south and, even on an overcast day, no artificial lighting is usually needed.  When lights are called for, they are energy-efficient and zoned, so they can be used selectively. To encourage workers to take public transport, there is no car park.

The exterior has been painted white to maximize the heat reflected from it.  And the rooftop garden, which has edible plants, helps cool the premises, while inside, plants absorb toxins from the air.

Sydney Morning Herald ‘Business Day’ 17 October 2007

By Carolyn Boyd