Design Lessons

Darling Park demonstrates that it is possible for a commercially successful office development to achieve very good energy performance. The fact that the brief was for a 'prestige development' was an important factor in this, because it meant that the quality of design, construction and specification was high. Materials, building services equipment, fittings and fixtures are all of substantial quality with good service lives. The design of the HVAC system, which is the major factor in the building's energy efficiency, appears to have been very carefully considered, and just as important, it has (and continues to be) very well maintained and its performance vigilantly monitored.

Darling Park therefore is rather like a top of the range BMW car: expensive, fuel-efficient, and if regularly serviced and generally cared for, will yield a long service life. It is also as conservative as a BMW. Conventional expectations of what a prestigious office building is, have not been challenged - full air-conditioning, a high percentage of glazing and orientation to maximise harbour views were all taken for granted assumptions from the outset. This has resulted in building shape, orientation and envelope that are actually suboptimal for energy performance. Here Darling Park is typical rather than aberrant.

It is in fact symptomatic of the unsustainable history of the office building as a typeform, which according to architectural historian Reyner Banham, developed over the 20th century towards the ascendancy of the thermally inefficient building envelope (the glass tower) compensated for by highly engineered, hard working HVAC systems (the legacy of W.H. Carrier). Internationally, this trend is now beginning to be challenged with a variety of new forms and approaches: office developments in thermally massive former industrial buildings; unconventional building shapes and floor plans to maximise thermal performance and daylighting; mixed mode systems that use both natural ventilation and conditioned air - are some examples of this.

The other lesson to be learnt from Darling Park comes from the double-edged nature of its five star hotel ambience. Such spaces may be pleasant to inhabit, but they do install a high level of serviced luxury as the norm. This comes with high environmental costs, and less obviously, also affects how people behave and their general expectations: there is more than a coincidence between Darling Park as a smoothly running luxury machine (serviced by invisible cleaners, protected by discrete business-suit attired security staff) and the obliviousness of staff in an organisation like Fairfax to how much energy they are using.

The challenge for future 'top of the range' office developments then are not reducible to technical questions of how to get better performance out of standard building typeforms, but go to new building forms, modes of operation and the redefinition of quality (e.g. as 'luxury without excess') as well as the integration of environmental responsibility into everyday work practices. While these are the preserve of different kinds of professionals: building designers, building managers, corporate business managers, the designed environments in which people spend most of their time can be important catalysts for the behavioural changes needed to significantly counter the predicted trend of a doubling of greenhouse emissions from the commercial building sector over the next decade (AGO, 1999).

There are further challenges in responding to changes in workstyles that will inevitably continue to occur over the life of major commercial buildings, like those seen in recent years: the IT explosion, hot desking, telecommuting, and generally office work is becoming far less location-dependent. The design challenge here centres on how traditional office towers can be retrofitted to meet changing needs, while continually improving their environmental performance.