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        Remaking Suburbia conference

7th Annual Green Building and Design Conference 2009 – Green Materials

9 and 10 September 2009, Melbourne Convention Centre

The 7th Green Building and Design Conference 2009, hosted by the Centre for Design and the School of Property, Construction and Project Management, was a success by any measure. Architects, academics, local councillors, politicians, project managers, post-graduate students and representatives of the manufacturing industry came together to share their knowledge – and sometimes frustration – about defining, selecting and applying ‘green materials’ in the built environment. A choice of nine site visit tours, workshops and networking drinks supported the practical transfer of know-how and strengthened the discourse on sustainability between the various disciplines in the building industry.

On the premise that operational energy demand in buildings approaching zero is possible and achievable through intelligent design (cf. CSIRO’s AusZEH initiative, Mirvac’s Harmony 9 home and Grocon’s Pixel building), the properties of the building materials as the next step towards greater sustainability in buildings were explored. The coherent and well rounded program with local and international speakers covered a range of topics from carbon mitigation and the effect of the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme to smart and alternative building materials. Chemical emissions from building products, the recyclable house and prefabrication were just a few issues investigated at the event. One theme clearly emerged: the consensus of all actors in the industry on the key role of Life Cycle Assessment in the decision making process. An early design and decision making tool for building materials was called for and the Centre for Design’s Building Materials Assemblies Scorecard (BAMS) was mentioned several times.

Running the conference as a webinar for the first time this year added to the success of the event. “The conference was great! I was very impressed with how well the online participants were integrated into the conference,” exclaimed an online participant from NSW. Thanks to the RMIT technical team, the conference was thus able to reach interested parties all over Australia while reducing its footprint significantly.

We should also like to thank the conference sponsors, the Australian Government Department of the Environment, Heritage, Water and the Arts (DEHWA), Sustainability Victoria and the Heritage Council for their generous support.

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