Glimpses

Productive vertical villages.

Visualisation: Charles Lin

At around 2015 the residential towers of Melbourne, characteristic of the early 21st century, began a range of conversions. The older buildings had simply become culturally and economically undesirable and unviable. Many of these conversions were inspired by the success of early innovators such as CH2, illustrating that a building that collects resources and is environmentally efficient could also be economically viable and desirable.

Site Two is one of these buildings. It is located on the water front in a bay-side suburb and underwent an extensive refit around 2015. The refit transformed the building socially and technically. What was previously a relative unproductive social monoculture can now be best described as a productive vertical village.

Site Two makes proficient collection and intelligent use of environmental resources, assisting occupants in meeting their environmental targets. The building has very low air conditioning demands and is efficient and productive with environmental resources. Its skin is an active environmental filter, providing insulation, insolation and a natural and intelligently designed ventilation system. The skin captures rainwater (much more rain falls on the sides of tall buildings than on the top), solar energy (integrated photovoltaic windows) and wind energy (through micro turbines distributed along the façade). The building also makes use of its exposure to the winds across the bay, generating electricity from a wind turbine on its roof.

The Place: A neighbourhood which is one of the early ‘activity-centre’ developments of the Melbourne 2030 plan.

In the more locally diversified Melbourne many places take on distinct cultural and economic characteristics. These result from the interplay of past policies, infrastructure and businesses investments (both public and private) and the progressive ‘local immigration’ of people attracted to particular amenities, lifestyles and communities.

The Pre-Emptive Downshifters glimpse has a dominant and widely recognised set of conditions particularly suited to a sub-culture of people that have become known as pre-emptive lifestyle-shifters. This group now make up a substantial proportion of the local residents. The name of the sub-culture arose from a humorous reference to a trend in the early years of the century. At that time it was found that about 25% of Australian workers, many in high-profile, high-pressure jobs, voluntarily opted for less demanding and financially less rewarding employment for life-style reasons (to spend time with family or for cultural or practical pursuits, and so on). This phenomenon became widely known as downshifting [See: Hamilton, C]. Pre-emptive lifestyle-shifters are so-called because they have ‘by-passed’ the initial engagement in the high-pressure economy, opting instead to go straight to the lifestyle sought in the downshifting culture (less consumption, less work).

Surveys show that in this locality a high proportion of the local population engage in the ‘mainstream’ economy as a less than full-time commitment (on average 3.5 days /week) . They spend the rest of their work and leisure time in pursuits which, though they may add to their income, are essentially viewed as leisure-work – activities that are more self-directed, which could generally be classified as community-related small businesses. The principle other characteristic of these ‘businesses’ is that most are not-for-profit or never intended to be highly profitable.

In 2010, as inner-city living increased in density, a large and successful ‘inner school’ decided to divide its existing campus into four dispersed ‘quarter campuses’ approximately 4 km apart. These campuses still operate as one school, with the teachers each having one campus as their ‘base’, and each quarter taking students only from within its 2 km radius. Students from all quarters meet several times a week for communal activities, and expensive or large equipment and facilities are each located at one of the quarter schools with time-tabled access for all students. Classrooms are ‘virtually extended’ to other classrooms at another campus, and operate like a double-length room with one end-wall projecting the ‘other half’ of the physically separated room.

 

Stormwater storage in the harbour.

Victoria Lake, the idea of “closing” Victoria Harbour to the sea and allowing it to slowly fill with rain/storm water and the flow from the Moonee Ponds Creek, is a 15-25 year vision. It includes a potential water storage solution and a much larger sustainability vision for the Docklands, and resulted from a workshop that investigated available storm water sources and suitable storage options.