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Location
Mantra Bell City Hotel Ballroom
205-215 Bell Street Preston
3072
Enter main car park off Hotham Street
Click here for a larger map.
"HOW GREEN DESIGN CAN MAKE A BETTER ZOO FOR PEOPLE", Presented by Michael Pearce
Michael Pearce has been working in Australia, the UK, Zimbabwe and Zambia for 42 years. His experience covers a wide range, from building in remote parts of Central Africa to coverting old buildings in North-East England and large-scale city developments in Harare and Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe, an ecological exhibition centre in Belgium and the CH2 council office block in Melbourne, Australia.
Committed to appropriate ecological architecture, Michael has focused upon the development of buildings which have low maintenance, low capital and running costs and renewable energy systems of environmental control. The most recent work involves an approach to design in which the architecture expression is seen as a balance of the natural, the social and the economic environments in which the project is sited.
Michael is a world authority on Green Buildings and has a fascinating story to tell in many respects including the work that he did as architect for the construction of Australia's first 6 Star Energy rated building.
"Eco design is more than yet another professional fee to pay and ESD is not just another set of rules. It is true that it is more work for the engineer and it should be a lot more work for the architect, and the whole building procurement team. It now has to be a team process because it is holistic. That means everything must be considered all at once. The problem is we are educated to specialise in our different fields hence the need for collaborative process. CH2 was designed by a team of about 20 sitting in a room every day for two weeks.
Why should it be a better zoo? One day I met a zoo keeper at Healesville wildlife sanctuary and we had this long conversation about the wombat who was sleeping in a shallow pit at our feet. What struck me was how much he knew about the animals generic origins, its physiology, the environment it came from, and its nitch in the ecosystem. As an artchitect who is meant to be designing the third skin for people, how little I knew about the human animals generic origins, its physiology, the environment it came from, and its nitch in the ecosystem.
Green design starts with saving energy but never ends when the complexities of the making of a living system like a constructed eco system is undertaken. I will talk about Biomimicry which is about copying the processes in Nature and about Biophillia which is about the deep links we have with nature and I will show how this changes architecture from what is the norm. It is an architecture unique to its site, its natural, social and economic environments".
