Environmentally Sustainable Period 2000-Current

From the beginnings in the alternative culture of the 1960s an awareness has been growing of environmentally sustainable design. The growth of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is changing the climate of the earth and projections are temperatures will rise, storms will increase and usual weather patterns will modify.

Architects have been considering the impact that people have had on the environment and have been examining ways that they can assist in reducing the negative impacts of building on the environment both on a macro and micro scale. Limiting the amount of energy necessary to produce materials, limiting the amount of greenhouse gases produced by conventional electricity production, the harvesting of water within a residential lot, limiting the effect on occupants health of certain materials, paints, etc, and the disposal of drainage waste and its effect on oceans and land, have all become part of the brief for contemporary design.

Building owners are realizing that if the environment isn't restored that their ideallic beachhouse may wash away with a tropical storm in areas that in the past didnt have tropical storms or their country house may become uninhabitable due to lack of water, excessive heat, or risks such as bushfire or landslip.

Architects have always been at the forefront of change and currently they are embracing the environmentally sustainable challenges and creating innovative building designs to limit damaging effects on the earth.

Lennox Head Recreation Hall by Allen, Jack and Cottier Architects, 2006, project architect Michael Heenan photo (GBarr 2007). this building has a cooling system which admits breezes through low louvres which combines with warm air inside and then the combined air is expelled by convection currents through the turbines on the roof. The system is a solar chimney and can be closed in winter to keep the warmth inside. These active solar systems are modelled by computers by engineers to achieve optimum performance.