This note was reviewed and approved for currency in September 2018.
Council House 2 (CH2) is a sustainable office building designed for the City of Melbourne. It meets the Council’s long-term need to house staff and breathes new life into an under-used part of the central city. The process of designing CH2 was highly collaborative and innovative – challenging traditional approaches to sustainability and building design.
The design process included an initial two-week workshop followed by regular design sessions that ran for eight months. The project team included architects, engineers, artists, environmental experts, future occupants, the CSIRO and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Victoria.
This intensive, collaborative approach facilitated many beneficial and unexpected design outcomes. It revealed how individual ideas are sustained working in collaboration and challenged what it means for a built environment to be 'biologically sustainable.'