This note was reviewed and approved for currency in October 2018. Built environments are an incarnation of our mental landscapes.  In Western culture we have an unhealthy and unsustainable approach to our inner paradoxes (e.g. our need to move and ...

This note was reviewed and approved for currency in October 2018. The way we form our urban areas, the spaces they create and the values they embody, have a profound effect on the quality of people’s lives. Urban designer Jenny Donovan draws on the ...

Biodiversity, the variety of life on earth, is required for the health of the natural environment and the continuation of the human species.  Though Australia has large endowments of biodiversity, human activities over the past 220 years have had ...

This note was reviewed in September 2018 and retained for legacy. This note, originally published in November 1996, was reviewed by Harry Partridge in November 2001 and republished in November 2003. Straw bale construction has achieved considerable ...

An integrated building design approach which considers a building’s orientation, layout, form and materials with respect to climatic conditions to maintain thermal comfort and reduce operational energy requirements. Includes passive design and ...

This note has been written to show firstly, where lighting design fits into the overall sustainability context, and secondly, to show how lighting design forms an integral part of that sustainable context. It does not detail design techniques or ...

Residential buildings account for around 13 per cent of the Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, and numerous studies have identified energy efficiency in residential buildings as one of the most cost effective approaches to climate change ...

Read time: 25 minutes A summary update has been provided for this note in June 2023. This summary reflects updates to this topic on the National Construction Code 2022 and BASIX. There is an urgent need to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net ...

The primary intention of passive design is to create a thermally comfortable building with reduced demand on mechanical (active) forms of heating, air conditioning and ventilation. This paper provides design practitioners with a general overview of ...

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 ...