Prebuilt
Commercial
Prebuilt
14–05–2016

A Small Footprint Packs a Punch

This week Green magazine invited us to Green Talks 9 : Small Spaces, with Melbourne architect Andrew Maynard.

The audience packed in to the Allpress back alley café in Collingwood, with Green enthusiasts spilling out the front door into the courtyard. Andrew spoke to the jam packed audience about fostering sustainable environments by embedding sustainable practices. He spoke about design principles as political assertions, challenging cultural expectations and the boundaries of prescribed behaviours associated with prescribed spaces. The discussion was not limited to working within the confines of a minimal footprint, but how the constraints and opportunities of a small building footprint can produce interstices and overlapping domains, which become playful and engaging architectural assets.

Engaging with social, cultural and spatial context is key to encouraging sustainable practice. It is impossible to separate the design and construction industry and professions from environmental impact and political association. What we physically build in many ways is not just a product, but provides the setting and affords the tools in which we make future progress. A sustainable architecture is an architecture which is conscious of its contribution, just as we the occupants need to be conscientious of how we produce our built environment.

As prefab builders we at Prebuilt embrace the opportunity to overcome the challenges which come with past generation’s attitudes and hang-ups, and champion an approach which values the efficient treatment of resources, with an inherent multidisciplinary approach to the production of space.

It is the design and construction industry’s responsibility to also ensure client engagement with sustainable values and question inherent conservatism. Instead of resorting to commoditised ‘greenwash’ solutions and superficial add-on technologies where the budget allows, by embedding sustainability in our methodology we can foster a culture of sustainability.

 



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A Small Footprint Packs a Punch

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