A Month of Green: A Path Toward a Sustainable Future

In July, BKK hosted Sustainability Takeover Month, with our working group organising a whole host of speakers, tours, site visits and a team building trivia night to wrap it up.

The month underscored our commitment to further educating our team, sharing knowledge and prioritising sustainable design practices.

Australia has committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, and the built environment accounts for nearly a quarter of these emissions (Climateworks Centre). At BKK, we recognise the significant impact our actions can have, and by taking small steps, we can make substantial strides to shape better places together.

The takeover included:

• The Design Speaks Architecture Symposium: Readymade
• Mass Timber Super Structures (MASSLAM) with Chris Gilbert from Ash Mass Timber Solutions
• Site visit to T3 Collingwood with Chris Gilbert and Jack Hill from Ash Mass Timber Solutions
• Crafted Hardwoods x Oslek Flooring product presentation with Darren Minto and Boyd Kelso
• Passivhaus 101 with Emilia Iacovino from Detail Green
• LoomTex Australian Textile Mill & Dyehouse Tour with Instyle
• Friday Night Presentation with Lucy Marsland and Chris Buntine from Atelier 10
• BKK’s Friday Sustainability Trivia Event

BKK is a carbon-neutral business dedicated to collaborating with organisations that share our values and fostering strong relationships with industry leaders in sustainable product and system development.

We strive to lead by example, integrating big-picture thinking into every aspect of our work. By continuously expanding our knowledge, we aim to design, work, and live more sustainably. By 2050 more than 50% of buildings expected to be standing would have been built in the previous three decades. The climate emergency requires all of us to act now, and our QA processes already prioritise sustainability in our design approach. As part of Architects Declare, BKK is committed to leading our industry into the next era of sustainable and innovative design.

Our SAP outlines our commitment to re-use and adaptation of existing buildings/materials, including: evaluating all our project sites and components for reuse, developing existing-resource drawings & schedules, diverting materials from landfill, and working towards design for disassembly detailing & practices. To further increase our knowledge in this space we attended The Design Speaks Architecture Symposium: Readymade, a speaker series highlighting built and research-project examples that champion retrofit and restoration of existing housing stock in Australia. We heard from leading designers, builders and industry professionals in the built environment, who are working towards retention and renewal in their practice. Some key takeaways from the day were:

• Consider the design narrative; Embrace what you have inherited and amplify the existing
• Use circular design thinking to give existing site materials new purpose
• Retrofit existing buildings to maintain neighbourhood character and half project carbon emissions
• Encourage clients to commit to 100% green power – the Victorian electricity grid is the dirtiest in Australia (https://environmentvictoria.org.au/our-campaigns/safe-climate/yallourn-australias-dirtiest-power/ (https://environmentvictoria.org.au/our-campaigns/safe-climate/yallourn-australias-dirtiest-power/))
• Use design for disassembly practices for future adaptability
• Share knowledge, IP and collateral for the greater good

Whilst BKK have worked on many adaptive reuse projects over the last 15 years, more recently, we have focused on conducting existing material evaluations in our projects, with the aim of upcycling as many existing materials as possible. In our RMIT Superlabs project we worked with suppliers to do an existing furniture audit and were able to refurbish and restore a significant number of pieces to fill a large classroom. Any components unable to be reused, were broken down into individual assets and responsibility recycled through the supplier’s circular economy business model. We continue to develop our systems and processes to increase our specification & design capabilities for salvaged and low impact materials.

A critical path on our sustainability journal is working towards processes to measure and compare embodied carbon targets in our projects. Whilst the grid can be decarbonised to reduce operational carbon emissions, we need to carefully specify materials with reduced embodied carbon in the first instance. As structure and sub-structure typically accounts for a major percentage of a new building’s embodied carbon, we hosted Chris Gilbert and Jack Hill from ASH Sustainable Hardwoods, who presented glue-laminated timber systems using Australian oak - an industry-leading mass timber solution. Whilst glue-laminated timber (GLULAM) isn’t a new technology, ASH’s MASSLAM is a leader in the industry, being the only glulam certified by the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australia (EWPAA).

In 2024 we worked with Detail Green to deliver our first residential project that utilises Passivhaus principles to exceed minimum building performance targets. The project has proved to be an incredible learning opportunity, so we invited Emilia from Detail Green to present Passivhaus 101 to our wider studio. The Passivhaus principle began in Germany in the 1980s to holistically improve the building standard and comes with its own certification process by applying a ‘fabric first’ design philosophy. The 5 key principles are:

• Continuous insulation
• Airtight construction
• Thermal Bridge Reduction
• High performance glazing and framing
• Mechanical ventilation heat recovery (MVHR)

Certified Passivhaus buildings exceed current Australian standards, as they effectively regulate the temperature, air quality and acoustics, and often export electricity into the grid. Utilising the five Passivhaus principles ensures, ultra energy efficient, comfortable, healthy, quality buildings, which can also be applied to retrofit and heritage projects. In typical construction you may see thermal bridging at building component junctions i.e. where the floor meets the walls, services penetration points, or gaps in the thermal envelope.

In our residential project we have detailed 420mm wall build-ups with 180mm of continuous insulation (thermal envelope), utilised tilt and turn doubled glazed windows with hardwood timber frames, a HRV (heat recovery ventilation system) allowing the building to breathe, thermal breaks between the steel structure and concrete slab, and rooftop solar. We are in the process of achieving a Passivhaus Low Energy Building Certification, which illustrates the comfort of the living environment we have designed. Our client will experience consistent thermal comfort, health benefits from the high air-quality, elimination of mould and humidity, and won’t be solely reliant on the grid to heat and cool her home. We can continue apply this knowledge on future projects and aim even higher to help us to achieve our building performance targets.

While Passivhaus-certified building may not necessarily be the right solution for every homeowner, designing with these key principles in mind and detailing homes to be more airtight and appropriately insulated, can greatly improve thermal comfort for the occupiers and reduction of energy usage for heating and cooling.

Instyle invited us to attend a factory tour of the LoomTex Australian Textile Mill & Dyehouse in Geelong, an Australian owned and operated weaving mill & dyehouse since 1922, combining over 100 years industry experience collectively. This is one of the last remaining textile mills in Australia, and as such, this joint venture is working to ensure the continuity of the rich heritage, craftsmanship and skilled labour in this diminishing industry. At BKK we have processes in place to ensure we prioritise specifying locally manufactured products such as this, to support local industry, reduce product embodied carbon and transport emissions, and increase accountability of the supply chain, manufacturing and product stewardship at end of life.

We also hosted Friday night drinks with our friends at Atelier 10, to have a conversation about design resilience in the built environment and designing with Country. We know our climate is rapidly changing, and there is an increased in correlation between climate and poor social outcomes. For example, more frequent heatwaves can lead to network blackouts, which disproportionately affects communities in low-performing buildings, and puts them at risk of negative health impacts. But what can we do in the built environment to increase equitable resilience in our cities?

Resilient infrastructure could look like:

• More public open green spaces to reduce urban heat island effect, provide free and accessible gathering places and contribute to absorbing stormwater runoff
• Increased local shops that activate the street, provide shelter, heat and cool
• More free cultural assets such as libraries, museums, galleries, cinemas, which encourage socialisation, participation and provides shelter from heat and the cold

These examples of community infrastructure contribute to our ecosystem by increasing the perceived safety, biodiversity, and nature positive strategies in our cities. Strategic master planning is required to link these ideas and connecting public places in proximity for everyone to share. Increasingly we need to take our clients on a journey to consider how projects can contribute to and connect with community infrastructure.

BKK designed North East Link’s Primary Package in collaboration with Warren and Mahoney Architects, landscape architects TCL and Indigenous design experts Greenaway Architects for the Spark Consortium. The project has been an urban-renewal opportunity, and we have focused on the places surrounding the new road – the social and ecological restoration of the neighbourhoods it traverses. It includes more than 34 kilometres of shared use paths, revitalised wetlands, water-sensitive urban design and active recreation spaces. There are land bridges with pedestrian trails and parklands alive with native plants that repair the local ecology. There are over 30,000 new trees. Operations buildings and noise walls are clad in photovoltaic cells, so that NEL harvests around two thirds of the energy it uses. NEL is on Country of the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung people. Fundamental aspects of its design grow from their living knowledge and history. We adopted three Wurundjeri pillars to guide the design intent: Connection to Country, Caring for Country, Connecting People.