Arabic version: مشاريع أسترالية تستعرض العمارة المستدامة

According to The Guardian, sustainable architecture projects recognised across Australia include adaptive reuse, low-carbon materials, renewable energy and designs intended to support community life. Younghusband, a former federation-era wool store complex in Kensington, Melbourne, has become a 17,000 sq metre mixed-use precinct while retaining its original brickwork and sawtooth roof. The project team says preserving most of the original fabric delivered an 84% reduction in embodied carbon and net-zero operational performance.

Younghusband won the Victorian chapter’s sustainability award. Judges highlighted all-electric services, rooftop solar, battery storage, rainwater harvesting and improved thermal performance. Also in Melbourne, the Port Phillip EcoCentre in St Kilda Botanic Gardens contains the southern hemisphere’s first citizen science laboratory. Its weathered timber cladding is intended to blend with the garden setting, while thermal efficiency, on-site energy generation and recycled and responsible materials are expected to make the building carbon-negative over its lifecycle.

In Port Adelaide, Yitpi Yartapuultiku by Ashley Halliday Architects is a finalist in three award categories after winning South Australia chapter awards for sustainability, steel architecture and public architecture. Developed through consultation with Kaurna elders and custodians, the Aboriginal cultural centre provides indoor and outdoor areas for education, exhibitions and community events.

Other projects include North Wright compact housing in Canberra, where 23 courtyard homes use recycled and low-carbon materials, thermal-efficiency measures and individual solar supplies. The precinct includes laneway gardens and “microforests”. In Hobart, the University of Tasmania’s Forest adapted two warehouses and a heritage-listed domed atrium. The public campus space includes an indoor forest of 3,200 native plants and used what the Tasmania jury described as Australia’s largest commercial use of hempcrete.