Lu Aye, Charters, WWS, Fandiņo, AM & Robinson, JRW 2003 'Sustainable design features in commercial buildings', 41st Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society, Destination Renewables: from Research to Market, Melbourne, Australia, 26-29 November 2003, pp. 388-394.
Abstract
Many of the controversies between the terms "sustainable building" and "environmental or green building", relate to the attempt of many groups, to interpret sustainable property development in a self-interested or ideological based manner. It seems that most of the new significant building projects claim sustainable credentials without a real evaluation of the building environmental performance. However, in some new developments significant environmental or green improvements may be apparent. On these premises, a research project (ARC Linkage Project) has been initiated by the Construction Industry Institute Australia (CIIA), The Public Works Department of Queensland, the Building Commission of Victoria and the University of Melbourne (UoM). The project aims to assess up to what extent commercial buildings can be regarded as sustainable taking into account their performance. To achieve this, the operational energy, carbon footprint, and the occupant's role of two sample buildings will be evaluated. Furthermore, it is expected to substantially extend this assessment to a larger sample of buildings in a later stage. The results of this Linkage Project are expected to provide a useful benchmark and a guide to the potential of environmentally sustainable property development. Two reference studies are described as background. The first one (an ARC SPIRT grant), investigated the life-cycle costing approach for a commercial office building development, whereas the second one, investigated the carbon footprint of a new commercial building.
Keywords: Sustainability; Life cycle costing; Energy; Carbon footprint; Environmental performance.