Site visit - La Trobe Terrace

You can see the huge prefabricated concrete walls have beendelivered and positioned together.

A temporary frame is holding them in place.

Research for major assignment - Buildings of Glen Murcutt

The Torre Cube

Catalan architect, Carme Pino has managed to unshackle a modern office block from the burden of energy intensive air conditioning through imaginative passive solar design. Her design positions the offices outside of a space created by three sentral arc-like concrete trunks. The prism-like glass walled and mostly column-free offices have opening windows and are protected from the Mexican sun by the external horizontally slatted wood panneling. This can be easily adjusted by office workers to suite their individual shade of light requirements. An inner void, formed by the trio of curving supports, creates an atrium that brings further natural ventilation up to the narrowest internal profile of the suspended ofices. Additionallt it allows a transfer of more daylight into those central spaces. If craving more air and light, inhabitants can visit open terraces, which also form the roofs of the loweer wedge of offices.

Site visit - Whoolsheds next to Deakin

Pictured is steel columns bolted to the steel floor beams. The reinforced concrete slab has partly been laid and in the spaces where it hasn't, you can see the reinforcement meshing.

Supported by the steel beams are the timber floor joists and the timber flooring.

Site visit - Yarra St

The slab has been poured and you can see the reinforcing for the columns.

Site visit - Malop St

Steel reinforcing being positioned for a column.

Ammendements to the Building Code of Australia

As of 1 November ammendements to the BCA for enegry efficiency of non-residential work took effect. The new part J of the BCA requires all new building work for class 5-9 buildings to comply with new regulations relating to building fabric (insulation), external glazing, building sealing, air movement and conditioning, artificial lighting and power and hot water supply. The new provisions are designed to reduce energy consumption and resultant greenhouse gas emissions.
The insulation group Kingspan says the new regulations will change the way we build and represents a fundamental step-change. They argue that industry and trade associations need to launch education initiatives to bring their members up to speed on compliance. There are also a number of computer modelling programs emerging as useful tools to assist the design of 'compliant' buildings.
A key component of the new BCA requirements is centered around theselection of materials that will provide stated thermal performance for the life of the building. Future initiatives are likely to require themeasurement or monitoring of energy consumption,and the use of thermal imaging to odentify hot (or cold spots) in building thermal envelopes, caused by air leakage problems or sub-standard insulation detailing. Kingspam believes it is important to take a holistic viewpoint, focused on speed of construction, fire-proof performance and guanarteed thermal efficiency in simplified building design. The challange in the future wil be for building specifiers to lookbeyond the performance of individual building components, and consider not only their long term thermal performance, but also their impact on the environment.

Article in Environ Magazine - 2007