How did this happen?

It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting in the back of the nail salon at Burwood Brickworks – the shopping mall that opened a day before. Georgia and Kianna are two girls getting their nails done. Kianna calls over to me.

“Excuse me,” she shouts. “What are you doing?”

I explain to these two strangers that I am testing the air quality of the building, waiting for a reading from the portable monitor I’m carrying. I ask them what the nail salon smells like. They pause for a moment, look at each other, and both reply at the same time:

“Nothing?!”

Smiling proudly, I explain to them that every single material in the space has been vetted for their impacts on air quality, and that six months prior, we had reviewed all the different beauty products used to paint nails and asked the salon owner to only use those that did not negatively impact air quality. The girls are palpably astonished. They’ve been in the shopping centre for the last three hours, having a glass of wine on the rooftop, taking photographs of the freshly-laid quail eggs on the urban farm, and wandering around the forty or so different retailers.

One of the staff, Jenny, turns to me and asks what we plan to do with the water. She is currently washing Kianna’s feet ahead of painting her nails.

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Once you’ve finished there, the water will drain down a non-PVC pipe and be recycled in the water treatment plant downstairs before being used to wash a car or cool the building.’

All three of them look at me in disbelief. Georgia, who lives on the same road as the shopping centre, explains that she has been waiting a long time for the building to open, and now that it has, there seem to be people coming from all over the country to see it.

“How did this happen?!” she exclaims.

They’ve got time, so I tell them.

Pivotal decisions

Around five years ago, as part of the Living Future Collaborative in Sydney, Australia, I had an idea to run a design competition primarily with the aim to increase knowledge about the Living Building Challenge^TM (LBC) in the Australian building industry. Multiple potential clients approached me. Upper-class homes in the countryside, a high-end office for a bank in the central business district, and eco-tourism were all candidates, but I had a very specific requirement, which was that the host building for the design competition had to “be for everyday people in an everyday place”.

Enter Frasers Property Australia, a diversified property group involved in developing homes, commercial, and industrial properties. I was, at the time, teaching Tai Chi two nights a week in a building called Central Park in Sydney, whose accolades include being declared the Best Tall Building Worldwide by Chicago’s Council for Tall Buildings & Urban Habitat. These seemed to be people who were willing to try something different. I decided to approach.

Frasers Property was in the midst of developing a disused brickworks site in a suburb 10 miles (6 kilometres) east of Melbourne, Australia. The “heart and soul” of the development was going to be a retail centre, complete with supermarket, cinema, childcare, medical centre, and a dizzying breadth of shops, services, and food outlets. The retail team, led by Executive General Manager Peri Macdonald, was open to the building being the subject of the world’s first LBC shopping centre ideas competition.

We received multiple entries from consortium across the industry, University student teams, and even from Primary School kids. Each had a number of unique approaches to the challenge, each proposing not just a shift in the way things could be built, but a shift in the way we as citizens might be consumers. At the awards ceremony, at the close of the prize-giving, I thanked everyone for their hard work and announced that whilst I hoped that some of the ideas might be adopted by the industry more broadly, I was of the opinion that LBC in retail of this kind would be “probably impossible”. Peri took me by surprise when he got back in front of the microphone to challenge me on my opinion. Frasers Property were going to give it a go!

That marked the beginning of a three-month feasibility into how to transform the Burwood Brickworks into a shopping centre that would not only work technically but could also be successful commercially, with all the financial hurdles of any other retail development being in place. I helped the team pull together a report presenting to the Frasers Property Executive that it would be possible to undertake three of the seven LBC Petals and still get the same return on investment, and that Petal certification should be sought. That presentation yielded my second big surprise. Rod Fehring, the Chief Executive Officer of Frasers Property, congratulated us on our feasibility work but told us to go away and come back by the end of the year explaining how we will achieve full LBC certification and make the same return on investment.

Staying honest

That leadership challenge by Rod threw the team into the start of a long-detailed design journey, working directly with major tenants to align them to the LBC, and embroiling us with a number of Authorities Having Jurisdiction – Australian Standards bodies, the Environmental Protection Authority, the Department of Health, and local Council. It would be an understatement to say that a lot was against us. At first, national and international-scale tenants didn’t necessarily want to change their standard design (particularly in relation to shop layouts to enable daylight and fresh air), the leasing market was (and still is) in a dip, and the authorities were risk-averse when it came to large-scale renewable energy, water recycling in a public building expected to have some 3 million visits every year, and there was even opposition to agricultural usages on-site as required by the LBC.

The process of making a building that “does good” instead of “less bad” is like this, though. It causes systemic change because it needs to. It cannot be a standard building with a handful of well-marketed technological features hanging off the sides. To really make this work, the design process ran concurrent with a number of necessary activities that aren’t normally involved in delivering a building. Partnerships were strengthened with the major tenants, helping them to evolve their design standards to accommodate daylight, radically improve the building’s biggest electrical demand — refrigeration — and determine which aspects of their operations could handle recycled water, assuming authorities might allow it. Frasers Property set up its own utility company to not only aggregate the renewables on-site and procure renewables off-site for redistribution to tenants, but to run a building-wide thermal energy plant that increased efficiency for everyone. State planning departments and local councils were toured around the site to explain deeply what it meant to attempt to achieve the world’s most rigorous standard for buildings.

At the end of the process, we were confident it could be done.

Whose journey?

The real success relied on focusing on two unique aspects of the LBC —     that it is based on proven performance, not desktop exercise, and the process involves real people visiting a real building in operation. This wasn’t just an empty commitment. It was a promise. Needless to say, building developers and contractors are not used to this. Green rating tools have followed the style of local building codes in Australia, in that they are “desktop administration” activities. For a building with so many organisations under the spotlight, this was, in fact, the elephant in the room. Shop owners, their designers, contractors, and suppliers were all completely unfamiliar with the LBC. Detailed workshopping was undertaken across all forty tenants of the building. We also had to engage suppliers across the country, encouraging something that has never been required in Australia but was so important for the little nail salon: product-chamber testing of the Volatile Organic Compounds. And once on-site, the only way to stop tradespeople from reverting to standard (bad) practice, was to police it. Thirty-seven non-compliances were rectified in the fortnight prior to opening, including the replacement of non-compliant cables, lighting, flooring, toilets, adhesives, signage, skirting, and sealants. Overlaying this level of scrutiny with the pressure of shops opening on time to start business has been terrifying, but one thing I have learnt is that contrary to popular professional advice, this process isn’t about “bringing them along on the journey”, but instead, going on theirs.

The most important building in the world

In many ways, the opening of the Burwood Brickworks is just another beginning — the next phase. Transformative experiences we discuss not only make for great social media posts, but totally change the expectations of what is possible, and what should be “standard”. A shopping centre is a great place for this ongoing conversation to play out. In that sense, I know for the Brickworks that one building can have more positive impact than an entire portfolio. It hasn’t been without its critics though. Every time someone tries to do something good, our culture seems to be one of jealousy, of negativity, and resistance. It’s easy to stand in the back and criticise. I do wonder why we are so keen to be “the devil’s advocate”. Even moments before the building opened, I kept hearing all the reasons why what we have done was too difficult, how it’s going to fail, that “this is how I would have done it instead,” and to that I say, “well, show us then.”

Some five years later, I find myself holding back tears as I explain to the girls in the nail salon that the Brickworks is “just a building”, but to me, it is certainly one of the most important buildings in the world, and it is they that make it so. I ask them to chat with the staff of the supermarket about the solar tubes overhead, whilst they push trolleys made from recycled milk bottles past fridges that have closed doors to reduce electrical and heating demands. I suggest that they watch a film in what is likely the healthiest cinema in the country, making sure they place their used popcorn box in the correct bin, given the centre is collecting a dozen separate waste streams. I encourage them to stand in the entrance lobby and close their eyes, so they can experience the soundscape and smellscape prior to exploring the enormous artwork on the ceiling created especially for us by indigenous artist Mandy Nicholson. And last of all, I ask them to be responsible consumers, advocating to retailers for changes they believe are necessary for a better future, and choosing carefully where to invest their money.

“Imagine a building designed and constructed to function as elegantly and efficiently as a flower: a building informed by its bioregion’s characteristics, that generates all of its own energy with renewable resources, captures and treats all of its water, is toxic free and beautiful.” From the Living Building Challenge Standard

In March of this year, the Living Future Institute of Australia (LFIA) asked designers around the world to consider this fundamental aspiration of the Living Building Challenge—in the context of a retail center in suburban Melbourne, Australia. The Brickworks Living Building Challenge design competition asked built environment professionals and students to compete for more than AUD $30,000 in prize money by designing a retail center for an old brickworks site.

Living Retail?

The New Yorker recently published an article entitled “Are Malls Over?” (March 2014) that professed to express what all workplace cubicle dwellers know—people like natural light and fresh air and, when deprived of them, feel oppressed. Perhaps for this reason, more than two dozen malls have closed in the US since 2010.

The WorldGBC report Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Retail: The Impact of Green Buildings on People and Profit, solidifies this proposition with the inclusion of data from the International Council of Shopping Centres (ICSC), which showed that “lifestyle” centers—those connected by pathways and are largely outdoors instead of contained within undercover malls—perform better. The survey tells us what we all intuitively know: that better buildings are visited more frequently and enjoy a higher number of repeat visits.

So instead of a “fast-as-possible” or “tolerated” experience, shopping centers must become genuine destinations that offer an increasing array of services for the local community. Traditionally a sector grounded in excess and waste, the shopping center of the future is surely one that attracts more foot traffic, is a place to be enjoyed, functions beautifully, promotes positive health and well-being, and has a net positive impact on its environment. What better tool exists than the Living Building Challenge (LBC) to provide the framework needed to realize what the shopping center of the future could be?

Commendation Design Student Category: Farmulous Urban Agriculture Education Centre

A Unique Prospect

The design competition was introduced because when the LFIA originally set out to ask what the world’s most sustainable retail center looked like, no one really knew the answer. At its heart, we were asking designers to consider the LBC in a new sector, in a country that has yet to see a certified Living Building, and on a real site with real-world constraints, owned by a real developer, Frasers Property Australia.

Describing their aspiration to create the world’s most sustainable retail center, Peri Macdonald, Frasers property head of retail says, “[We are] not just about using tools or securing ratings. We continuously invite design teams, professionals, students and anyone else interested to not just think outside the square, but reinvent the box. We are calling on extraordinary people to think boldly.”

Commendation Design Student Category: Brickworks Green

Passionate people would spend huge amounts of time and energy to both unearth and give birth to new ideas in this new context: ideas that could be potentially applied to retail centers worldwide. As such, one of the key moves in the design competition was that the intellectual property for these ideas stayed with the designers—a unique gesture that many designers greatly appreciated.

Out-Of-the-Box Ideas to Celebrate

The winning prize in the Design Student Category, called “Burwood Life Centre,” by University of Melbourne students Bhargav Sridhar and Monica Sutisna, integrated an orchard, with rammed earth as an amazing visual feature that also uses excavated materials on site. This was a design that included a research lab and library, and the addition of bees to the site for pollination and regeneration.

Winner Design Student Category: Burwood Life Centre

The professional commendation went to a project titled “The Gathering,” led by KPA Architects. The design was based around a central garden that connects two levels of a building that behaves like a flower, with inwardly embracing elements that stretch outwards. When asked what the main challenges for retail center design were in pursuing the Living Building Challenge, the design team noted that:

“A challenge we faced was to grapple with the seemingly conflicting outcomes of the retail center. On the one hand a retail center encourages consumerism, needing to be profitable by bringing in more foot traffic or through more spending. On the other hand is the social benefit to the shoppers and community, being a place of physical and psychological health and well-being which implies an austere simplicity.”

Third Place Commendation: The Gathering

The professional runner-up prize and winner of the People’s Choice Award went to a project titled “For the Common Good—A Restart to Retailing,” which was a collaboration between Buchan Group, Grün Consulting, and Inhabit. Their design displayed an inventive digital communication and education concept, where the center became a community gathering space instead of a shopping center, challenging traditional thinking whereby the design “starts with sustainability” and works backwards to make retail fit (which is the opposite of common practice to treat sustainability as an add on).

People’s Choice & Runner Up: For the Common Good

The Professional Winner was an outstanding submission called “The Difference is Living,” by thirty passionate professionals from eight organizations: dwp|suters, Aurecon, CJ Arms, reedbed technology, Eco Harvest, Biomimicry Australia, Future Food, and Watpac. Using a modular “screwed not glued” construction typology that could be taken apart and reused later in the retail center’s lifetime, and integrating key principles of biomimicry, the team created a social heart at the project’s center, invoking strong spirit of place and acting as a link between the retail and residential communities.

When asked about their experience of the design competition, the team responded:

“The Living Building Challenge is the Everest of sustainability challenges, to reach LBC’s demanding targets we found that everyone in our team needed to walk in the shoes of others. As architects we had to understand what the builders require; our engineers needed to see things from the shopper’s perspective and so on. Intense cross-discipline collaboration, open mindedness and engagement were key to developing breakthrough ideas that actually work in practice.

Ultimately sustainability in itself is not a discipline or skillset that can be added onto projects. Understanding that sustainability is a way of thinking and living, as opposed to a service, is fundamental.”

Winner: The Difference Is Living

A Legacy for the Future

Alongside the competition for professionals and design students, the LFIA held a similar competition for students attending local primary schools. The winning design came from a student at Antonio Park School and showed practical ways to reduce energy demand using solar panels, natural light and external shading, and water captured and distributed via cleverly placed funnels that filter it down through vertical gardens. The design also illustrated a human scale, with a focus on pedestrians and cyclists—noting that the main entrance was not a car park! The prize for the winning school, and a legacy for the competition itself, was a 5kW solar photovoltaic system, to be installed by one of Australia’s market leaders, Solgen Energy Group.

Wider Impacts

At the awards party in June, several other prizes reflected the competition’s impact beyond this one site. Two special commendations in particular were awarded for standout efforts that went well beyond the call of the design competition.

The first special commendation went to a project called “Living Retail,” by NH Architecture, Ark Resources, Aspect Studios, E2 Designlab, Ceres, and Mott MacDonald. The submission was a visually impressive “long life, loose fit” design, integrating high-density residential buildings, included a mobile batching plant to address waste, and proposed an arrangement whereby the retail tenants pays for power, incentivizing battery storage. Aside from the innovation presented in the project, the remarkable thing about this piece of work, and hence the award, is that some of the team that produced it have been working on the site with Frasers Property. Being ineligible for a cash prize, this team went to great lengths to re-examine their own design work, and reimagine it in the context of the LBC, outside of the design competition itself.

The second special commendation was awarded for an entry called “The BioVale,” by DesignInc Melbourne, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff, Outlines Landscape Architects, and Will Nash. Within the course of the competition time frame, the team did some remarkable volunteering, contributing to a number of not-for-profit community and environmental groups, including tree planting with Landcare, a Trail Walker with Oxfam, and Bushcare at an Australian National Park. Their volunteering work stood out among more than twenty projects that received many hours of volunteer time as one of the design competition outcomes.

Volunteer Champion: The Biovale

In addition to the remarkable volunteering, the design competition also required entrants to try out their skills in advocating for greater transparency through the Declare label, and improved social justice through the Just label. More than fifty organizations in Australia were contacted as part of the design competition, being asked to consider “nutrition labels” to provide a holistic picture of both the products they produce and the human story behind those products.

Summing Up

The overall response to the design competition has been overwhelmingly positive, and speaks to a compelling vision for a living future that we wish to share. Much like the LBC itself, the entire exercise has been unique in that it has not been about settling for previous notions of best practice; instead, it adopts an uncompromising and unashamed future focus to ask questions we may not yet have the answer to, but which we cannot afford to ignore.

The act of casting a global net to elicit truly innovative and progressive designs to unlock new possibilities for sustainability in retail, a traditionally wasteful sector in need of new ideas, has shown us that from primary school students and manufacturers to world-leading designers, inspiration can come from anywhere. This competition has unlocked some truly different thinking, and that’s what the Living Building Challenge is all about.