Sustainable Design Analysis of Ballarat

GovHu Building Project

Bol Augustino Maduot Parek

Student ID: 32784945
AA03
Student Number 32784945 Class AA03

Executive Summary

Integrating sustainable designs in a building has become very popular amongst arctic htes
because buildings cause large amounts of waste. This research report provides
information on sustainable design and its benefits. Its centre of attention is on Ballarat
GovHub, a building which is sustainable and located in Victoria, Australia. This report
explains the importance of raw materials, energy efficiency, and indoor environment in a
sustainable design building and investigates as well as analyses Ballarat GovHub
approach in reference to these three design principles. Ballarat has successfully
completed their goal of being a sustainable design, the project could improve more to be
fully sustainable. This report will also include conclusions with recommendations on how
Ballarat could have been fully sustainable.

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1.0 Introduction
Sustainable design is a theory of design applied to buildings to attain social, economic,
ecological sustainability. The increase in environmental issues like greenhouse effects and
global warming has made sustainable designs more popular currently. Since sustainable
designs address a wide range of economic, environmental and social issues the advantages could
be huge (Kibert, 2016). According to multiple researchers it is humans duties and
responsibility to protect and take care of our environment hence sustainable designs are
recommended.

Ballarat GovHub is a design project that was completed in 2021. It is located in Ballarat,
Australia. The engineers that built Ballarat Govhub have sought to institute a more efficient
and environmentally friendly building. Ballarat Govhub houses up to 1000 Victorian
government workers and its job is to increase the delivery of government services. The
building includes a lower reconstructed hall for cafe/bar, five storeys of office space, and a
car parking with facilities to encourage walking and cycling.

This report will explain the key features of a sustainable design. Then, it will evaluate and
analyse Ballarat GovHub according to the design principles of sustainable design.
Specifically, the report will be looking at the raw materials, Energy efficiency and indoor
environment of Ballarat GovHub. Finally, this report will provide suggestions on how
Ballarat Govhub could improve its design to be more sustainable.

2.0 Principles of sustainable design

Kilbert (2016) described Van Der Ryn and Cowman (1996) theory. The theory believes
that ecological design is a construction that lessens environmental impacts through
integrating itself with living processes. It also stated that the centre of attention when
building a sustainable design should be the five design principles: low impact materials,
energy efficiency, design for reuse and recycle, quality and durability, and rewanablity. The
key values of the design process are kept front when design principles are applied
(Rosala, 2020). The design process integrated requires the progress of goal setting and
priorities (Keeler & Vaidya, 2016, p 1). This increases understanding of the project.
Applying Frameworks for instance LENSES which was created in Colorado state
university's institute is very useful because it provides guidance throughout the design,
manufacturing, and operations.
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2.1 Raw material

Utilising materials that are recycled and using old building parts permits your building
project to decrease its green house emission and waste significantly (Alfredsson, 2020).
He also stated recycled furniture that humans have thrown away has increased, for
example glass and wood, therefore becoming a popular choice. Sustainable designs can
accumulate and maintain natural energy, for instance solar and wind by keeping and
reusing it appropriately (Koutsogiannis, 2018). Therefore sustainable projects should
possess facilities like recycling, solar panels, and internal space. One major benefit of raw
materials is energy conservation. This leads to huge amounts of greenhouse gases being
saved. Also the build becomes more efficient as well as inexpensive when raw materials
are applied.

2.2 Energy efficiency

Sustainable designs are attained through sensitive design, for example, energy efficiency.
Senstives design incorporates good studies of the surrounding, factors like site location
and local culture. Improved energy efficiency plays several roles in sustainable design. It
contributes to keeping down climate change by reducing greenhouse gases released into
the atmosphere and improving carbon emission (Ganda and Ngwakwe, 2014). When
applying improved energy efficiency a lot of planning, architects can do this by building
envelopes (Iwaro and Mwasha, 2013).

2.3 Indoor environment

Indoor environment quality (IEQ) is important to address, since we spend about 98 percent
of our time indoors, hence it is important we consider IEQ as a key element of integrated
building (Keeler and Vaidya, 2016). Rail systems should be collaborated in ecological
design, this should be leading to the building co-evolve with nature (Kibert, 2016). A quality
sustainable design should relate people with the natural environment. Architectural
designs should create openings to create views in order for humans and nature to interact.

3.0 Analysis
This fragment will be investigating the Ballarat GovHub in terms of the three key features
provided, raw materials, energy efficiency, and Design with nature.

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3.1 Analyse ballarat GovHUb employing raw materials

One of the most important things is the choice of the material for the design. Renewable
resources and recycled content is what is recommended as they are environmentally
friendly (Keeler & Vaidya, 2016). The architects used timber and recycled bricks as a
sturcal framing for the project Ballarat GovHub therefore it successfully applied a design
principle. Timber is a renewable resource as well as a recyclable natural resource. The
design project was built mainly with sustainable materials. The figure below shows timber
being installed in Ballarat GovHub.

Figure.1 Timber

3.2 Analyse Ballarat GovHub based on energy efficiency

One of the goals for Ballarat GovHub was to reduce carbon emission and have improved
energy efficiency in the building. This was successfully done because the building includes
internal lighting, high efficient water fittings, HVAC high efficient system, and Solar panels
PV system. Buildings that possess good energy efficiency are made of designs of HVAC
systems, lighting, equipment, solar heat (Keeler and Vaidya, 2016). The figure 2 and 3
shows a couple of equipment Ballarat GovHub used.

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Figure 2. Solar panels figure 3. HVAC system

3.3 Analyse Ballarat GovHub based on indoor environment
Buildings with a sustainable indoor environment contain ventilation control, building
maintenance, IAQ commission, and source control through wise selection of building
materials. Ballarat Govhub is not a good example of a building with a sustainable indoor
environment, but it has incorporated a couple sustainable features for indoor environment.
As you can see in the figure 3, Ballarat GovHub uses daylight instead of internal light.
figure 3 is a good example of how you can reduce waste. Figure 5 is the wise selection of
material the building selected. 96

Figure 4. Interior of Ballarat

4.0 Conclusion and recommendations
In short, Sustainability in design has plenty of benefits to our environment hence many
researchers recommend it. The different factors to examine when constructing a
sustainable design are social, economic, ecological sustainability. Sustainable designs can
be implemented by applying raw materials, upgraded energy efficiency, and Design with
nature. Ballarat GovHub has accomplished implementing various design principles.
However Ballarat can make some enhancements to make the project completely
successful. First suggestion is Ballarat GovHub could improve their energy efficiency with
applying ventilation systems to improve their indoor environment, for example installing
operating windows. This helps by improving ventilation for cooling and can provide back
up ventilation in case there's a power outage. The architecture would have used materials
that were more sustainable for instance bamboo and cork. Both of these materials are
havertest from trees.

Word count:1110

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References
US Green Building Council. (May 4, 2015). Green Building 101: Why is energy efficiency
important? [Online]. Available: http://www.usgbc.org/articles/green-building-101-
why-energy-efficiency-important

Rosala. Maria. (2020, August 2), Crafting Product-Specific Design Principles to Support
Better Decision Making. Nielsen Norman Group.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-principles/#:~:text=Design%20principles
%20help%20to%20keep,designers%20worry%20about%20complex%20problems.

Keeler and Vaidy. Marian and Prasad. (2016). Fundamentals of integrated design for
sustainability. Keeler and Vaidy

Kibert. Charles.J. (2016). Sustainable Construction. Charles J Kibert

Ganda and Ngwakwe. (2014). Environmental Economics. Role of energy efficiency on

sustainable design. 86.