This note was reviewed and approved for currency in August 2018.  This paper describes how green roofs influence the energy performance of a hypothetical commercial office building in each of the Australian Building Code Board’s eight climate zones ...

Read time: 4 minutes The careful selection of building materials and products and their use in design has the potential to reduce life-cycle environmental impacts — including resource depletion and consumption, habitat and biodiversity loss, ...

This note was reviewed and approved by the Author in September 2018. Filter House design was developed as an entry to the Broome Sustainable Housing Competition, organised by the Western Australian Department of Housing and Works.  The competition ...

Put simply, solar access is the availability of sunlight to a property. For architects, the need to consider solar access in the overall design of a structure is two-fold: Firstly, the structure must be designed and situated on the property to ...

The benefits of green roofs have been well documented over the last twenty years and yet their implementation in Australia has been slower than in other developed countries. This paper goes beyond the EDG introductory paper DES 53: Roof and Facade ...

This note was reviewed and retained for legacy in September 2018.  This note deals with the methods and tools for assessing the environmental performance of a building design in the early design phase of a building project. It describes building ...

This note, originally published in November 2000, was reviewed by John Greenwood in September 2005. This paper examines the issue of solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and its impact on public health in Australia, which has the highest rate of skin ...

Read time: 11 minutes Welcome to the Jungle House (WTTJH) is a home designed to fit within the existing building’s reconstructed masonry fabric and is an archetypal model of future sustainable carbon neutral living. It is located on a 98sqm ...

Environmental design is in the broadest sense, the human response to the understanding that we are a part of our environment. This is the design realisation that ecology matters.  This area of human endeavour has undergone a rapid transformation in ...

Read time: 18 minutes Water is necessary for human survival, but it is also a key ingredient in the production of construction projects. Increasing water scarcity means that we must reduce water use and improve water efficiencies across all human ...