Build, October/November 2003

Landcare Research’s new premises at Auckland University’s Tamaki campus will provide examples of sustainable design that can be incorporated into other buildings.

Towards the end of this year, Landcare Research, a Crown Research Institute, will be moving its Auckland-based staff from Mt Albert to new premises, currently under construction at the University of Auckland’s Tamaki campus.

Biosecurity staff from MAF, involved in border control surveillance, will share the building, which will house about 90 science and support staff including 10 collaborators, mainly from the University of Auckland.

The building will be able to host seminars and meetings, and will contain laboratories, glasshouses and housing for our national arthropod, fungal and microbiological collections. A research record and educational facility will be provided for those interested in sustainable design, and visitors will be welcome.

In addition, the new facilities are designed to have a minimal environmental footprint, with reduced energy consumption, mains water supply, and waste. An essential requirement of the design is that the sustainable aspects of the building do not add to its cost. This is to ensure that cost does not deter others from adopting the buildings design features. The building will provide examples of sustainable design that can be incorporated into other buildings and infrastructure provision as the greater Tamaki area undergoes a regeneration and development process over the next few years.

Passive Energy Management
During the initial decision-making design stages, Connell Mott MacDonald’s engineers used innovative new software to model building materials and windows for natural lighting, heating and ventilation for various times of the day, throughout the year. A thick inner shell with extra insulation, overlain with a light outer wall, provides excellent heat control. This optimizes the potential passive benefits from natural sources, which can then be augmented with energy-efficient technology to harvest waste heat for re-use in other parts of the building. Solar-powered water heating and a small windmill have been included, but other energy-generation features will be added later. This is because passive energy management is the main focus initially, to minimize the construction budget.

The energy consumption target it 100 kW hrs/m2/yr. This is averaged over the offices, spaces for the national collections, and the laboratories, which are notoriously energy intensive. A conventional office building uses about 200 kW hrs/ m2/ yr.

Water Management
Instead of allowing rainwater to run off buildings into the storm-water system, as much as possible will be collected and stored on site for use in all urinals (manual flushing), ground-floor toilets, and for irrigating gardens and glasshouses. Rainfall from roofing areas will flow into a 75,000-litre concrete storage tank. Three additional 25,000-litre tanks will detail storm-water overflow, which will be used to top up the main storage tank. Water will be pumped from the main storage tank back up to a roof header tank using electricity supplied by a small wind turbine. Any overflow from the detention system (e.g. during a big storm when the tanks are already mostly full) will overflow into the rain garden. A mains back-up will be available in the event of a system failure.

Discharge to the municipal sewer system is being minimised by including composting toilets – low-impact alternatives that meet all health and waste discharge requirements. This is, as far as we know, the first use of composting toilets in a commercial building of this size in New Zealand. The system will conform to the Australian standard for composting toilets, the New Zealand standard for wastewater, and new health standards for on-site waste disposal. This means the compost can eventually go on to the surrounding gardens.

This project offers exciting opportunities for others interested in sustainable design. We gratefully acknowledge the enthusiasm and advice of the architects from Chow:Hill, the engineers from Connell Mott MacDonald, and Robert Vale from School of Architecture, University of Auckland.