Sustainability highlights
The AMRF First Building incorporates Indigenous culture into its outcomes, setting new and durable benchmarks for connection to Country and sustainable design principles. It’s also designed with the circular economy in mind — and can be disassembled or adapted at the end of its life.
Highlights include:
- A 50% reduction in embodied carbon, achieved via advanced timber technology above ground that negates the need for a traditional concrete structure. In the ground, low-carbon concrete is utilised.
- Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), low-embodied carbon building materials including rammed earth have been selected that connect the building back to Country.
- The building’s prefabricated modular components are transported to the site and mechanically fixed together, generating a substantial reduction in construction time and cost.
- Fifty percent of the roof is covered in photovoltaic devices, with portions immersed in roof top vegetation, which reduces ambient temperatures and increases energy production efficiencies.
- The building adopts a holistic approach to the water cycle informed by the traditional Indigenous practices in this region; permeable hard surfaces allow water to naturally filter back into the local creek network, retaining water bodies to promote biodiversity, and celebrating water by bringing people closer to it.
- Natural ventilation for 60% of the year in the workplace and public areas. A ‘red light green light’ system notifies users of which air system will be in place the following day enhancing awareness of natural ventilation and changing workplace mentality.
