The Living Future Institute of Australia (LFIA) is calling architects, designers and students to reimagine and restore the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) building as part of the ILLUMANATE Living Building Challenge Design Competition.

Launched in partnership with Development Victoria, this year’s competition seeks to redefine the future of the built environment through restorative architecture by challenging participants to create the most sustainable and restorative, heritage-listed building in Australia.

The building must live up to precise environmental, self-sustaining standards, including generating its own energy and capturing and treating its own water.

The Living Building Challenge® Certification is a high-performance program that sets the benchmark for buildings that go beyond sustainability with regenerative design. It’s one of the most advanced measures of sustainability worldwide.

The design competition was last held in 2016 for the Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre in Melbourne. More than 40 organisations and 100 individuals competed to push the boundaries of regenerative design to create the most certifiably sustainable shopping centre in the world.

Looking to break the misconception that only new buildings can be regenerative, the 2023 design challenge focusses on existing buildings, which constitute a significant portion of our built environment. With estimates suggesting that up to 80% of buildings that will exist in 2050 already exist today, achieving Net Zero by then necessitates deep retrofits.

The MMBW building, located in the western Melbourne suburb of Sunshine North, is a heritage-listed building constructed in the 1970s. This building is integrated within Development Victoria’s broader plan to facilitate a sustainable mixed use development of the site with residential, retail and community uses.

LFIA is committed to demonstrating the remarkable potential that emerges from integrating the standards and principles of the Living Building Challenge into pre-existing structures. At a time when the built environment generates 40% of annual global CO2 emissions, regenerative design presents a pathway to change, where buildings go beyond being merely green and become restorative, giving back to the people who inhabit them, the land they stand on, and the resources they utilise.

“We’re here to maximise the positive. Usually the focus for the industry is on doing less bad, but actually it’s about doing better, for both society and the planet,” LFIA CEO Laura Hamilton-O’Hara commented.

“A Living Building generates its own energy using renewables, acts as part of the hydrological cycle of the site, and takes into account embodied energy in materials and tools used. Regenerative Buildings are our theory of change and what they do is create people who can see the world differently. They can see what’s possible, pushing the boundaries of design and architecture to become truly regenerative.

“The Living Building Challenge is the Everest of green building rating tools. We can’t wait to see the entries for this year’s Challenge.”

Chair of the LFIA board Vanessa Trowell added, “The most sustainable building is one that already exists. So we need to embrace the idea of retrofitting and reimagining an existing building to create regenerative spaces. We can’t always start from scratch.”

Development Victoria CEO Angela Skandarajah said, “We’re proud of Development Victoria’s strong and clear commitment to creating a sustainable future. Our aim is to ensure we leave a strong legacy across our portfolio, through best practice sustainable construction and development.”

Image: Photography ©John Jovic

Branko Miletic

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