Buildings are central to creating more sustainable cities, and green ratings are often used to assess how well a building measures up against this goal. But the current system has serious flaws.
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Articles on Sustainable design
Displaying 21 - 40 of 57 articles
When talking about heritage, we need to be clear about our definitions and our objectives for each building. Then we can work on achieving the optimum balance of heritage and sustainability.
New South Wales is the only state that has made meaningful progress on legislation and enforcement of standards capable of creating a sustainable built environment.
After extreme weather events like Hurricane Harvey, city planners need to think about the smartest way to rebuild. Here are some no-regrets infrastructure investment ideas.
Why, after decades of international agreements, are we still damaging the environment? New research, looking at dozens of unsuccessful policies, has uncovered the basic elements of failure.
Conventional leather is fraught with ethical and environmental issues. But leather grown from fermented kombucha tea offers consumers a glimpse of a DIY, sustainable future.
Emerging research challenges the idea that sustainable housing is unaffordable. It shows sustainability and good design can be affordable when analyses include social, health and wellbeing benefits.
Reinforced concrete is everywhere. But unlike plain concrete, which can last for centuries, reinforced concrete can deteriorate in decades as the reinforcing bars succumb to rust.
It’s time to rethink the stack-em-high and sell-em-cheap approach to business.
Pedalling our televisions could save us a fortune in electricity – and keep us in great shape, too.
It’s up to state governments to ensure urban planning rules properly reflect both the desires of residents in the 21st century and the principles of sustainability.
Changing habits and pollution concerns are calling time on our love affair with cars. But this doesn’t have to be the end.
Memories of school demountables might cause some people to sneer at prefabricated buildings. But they can be stylish too, not to mention offering a possible way to ease the housing affordability problem.
The outcry over the government’s plan to allow wood burning from native forests under the revamped Renewable Energy Target belies the fact that woodchips can be useful and sustainable if harvested responsibly.
Nobel Laureates met recently in Hong Kong to sign a memorandum calling for cities to help guard against climate change. As the most creative places on the planet, big cities are the perfect place to meet this challenge.
Rammed earth has been used for centuries, for buildings that have stood the test of time, including China’s Great Wall. It’s also cheap and environmentally friendly, so why aren’t modern architects embracing it?
Last week the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) began investigating a political donation of A$18,000 made by Nathan Tinkler’s Buildev corporation. The 2010 donation helped…
Although it may seem counter-intuitive, it would be better if we built buildings from wood than from concrete, brick, aluminium and steel. We use millions of tonnes of these modern materials every year…
Air conditioners across the country are running on full this week as Australia battles a heatwave – but are we missing an obvious, leafy solution? Trees, which provide shade and act as natural air conditioners…
Is it a spaceship piloted by a friendly alien, a metallic pine cone or a giant cheese-grater? No, it’s Adelaide’s South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (the SAHMRI building for short…
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Top contributors
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Associate Professor, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University
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Researcher, Universidade de Lisboa
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Postdoctoral researcher, TU Wien
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School of Architecture, Professor of Architecture, University of Portsmouth
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Elaine Stratford is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor, School of Geography, Planning, and Spatial Sciences, University of Tasmania
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Professor of Sustainability, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney
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Senior Lecturer, Department of Agriculture and Food Systems, The University of Melbourne
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Professor and Dean of the School of Fashion and Textiles, RMIT, RMIT University
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Senior Lecturer Sustainable Design, Lancaster University
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Senior Lecturer - Energy, Queensland University of Technology
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Emeritus Professor of Urban & Regional Planning, University of Canberra
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Barrister, Law Lecturer, Swinburne University of Technology
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Manager, Masters of Management, Swinburne University of Technology
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Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University
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Laureate Professor, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity
