Design Anthology - Asia Pacific Edition
At this year’s Melbourne Design Week, Finding Infinity’s Ross Harding and a fleet of leading architects laid out a realistic game plan for Melbourne 2.0: an environmentally self-sufficient city for the very near future
In ten years, Greater Melbourne could be powered entirely by renewable energy, be water neutral and produce zero waste. A utopian pipedream? Not according to Ross Harding, principal at Finding Infinity. With collaborators in the government and built environment industries, the Melbourne-based consultancy works towards finding pragmatic solutions for a sustainable future.
While the phrase ‘ the new normal’ has now become inextricably associated with our pandemic reality, the project wasn’t developed in response to COVID-19. In fact, the groundwork for A New Normal was laid at Melbourne Design Week over two years ago, in a talk exploring what might be done to make the city sustainably self-sufficient. ‘ The question was, what are the steps to ensure we make no negative environmental impact?’ says Harding. ‘How much space would we need, what would it cost? If we copy-pasted all the world’s most effective initiatives in Melbourne, what could the answer be?’
What began as a report soon evolved into an exciting proposition founded on detailed calculations and research, all with the goal of ‘transforming Melbourne from a consumer to a producer by 2030’. Taking ecologically successful cities across the globe as working case studies, the simple premise is that there is no need to invent new solutions, only to apply what already exists. Importantly, the project puts a tangible figure on the spatial and budgetary resources required to implement these locally. No lofty hypotheticals, just a realistic road map to improvement through design. ‘Because these projects would contribute more energy than they consume, we worked out that they would actually pay for themselves in less than ten years. So, while it sounds like a really ambitious environmental strategy, it would be great for the economy too,’ Harding says.
For Melbourne Design Week 2021, A New Normal invited 15 of Melbourne’s most prolific and influential studios to each find a solution to one sustainability challenge. Foolscap Studio tackled the challenge of electrifying transport, while WOWOWA and Six Degrees Architects suggested ways to optimise the process of converting organic waste to energy. Others on the list include Clare Cousins Architects, Grimshaw, Hassell, Fender Katsalidis, Kennedy Nolan, John Wardle Architects, Openwork, NMBW, Ha, Fieldwork and Edition Office — an impressive cohort of problem solvers.
Kennedy Nolan’s Hotel Optimismo — a sample of the firm’s A New Architecture pilot project — lets people experience zero-carbon ‘grid positive’ construction for themselves. Here, solar panels are used as cladding, rather than hidden on rooftops, and cross-laminated timber construction comes to the fore.
‘The idea of it being a hotel was that people could go there and feel an affinity with new systems, to feel comfortable with them,’ explains Rachel Nolan, director at Kennedy Nolan. ‘Ross was keen for each project to have a fun cultural element, something for the community. And I think that’s how society will start to see and accept these more environmental ways of doing things. That’s the beauty of architecture: we have the ability to combine the social and the technological, and affect change.’
A New Normal is equipped with a straightforward plan, sound research on similar international initiatives that show a demonstrable return on investment, and a cavalcade of award-winning architects ready to execute it. With the Finding Infinity team now on the hunt for investors and sites across greater Melbourne, the vision is so clear, it seems inevitable — watch this space.