Dynamic offices on trend in Perth

Recently approved office projects in Perth are driving a new wave of sustainability-focused buildings across the city.

In September, a local development assessment panel unanimously approved GDI Property Group’s adaptive reuse of the car park on the corner of Wellington and Pier streets.

The Wilson car park on the subject site, which provides 595 parking bays, will be retained and reused for a mixed-use development comprising 51 apartments across five levels, a 12-storey office tower and a public plaza.

Construction of the $150 million timber-hybrid development is expected to yield a significant reduction in carbon emissions, according to GDI head of development David Ockenden.

Mr Ockenden said the industry had jumped on the carbon-neutral bandwagon in terms of offsets but had not pursued the root cause.

“There are two parts where carbon is consumed. In the operation and the creation of the building in the first place,” he said.

“The whole idea in this space is just don’t create the carbon load in the first place.

“With these timber buildings, there is a significant step down in the consumption of carbon … and what perplexes me is the industry isn’t really dealing with that, the industry is not talking about it and is not pursuing it.

“The NABERS [National Australian Built Environment Ratings System] and the GreenStar [ratings] are the two key drivers that the industry just jumps on.

“This notion of embodied carbon has just not woven its way into the assessment realm, and it’s still focused on recycling, garbage logistics, low VOC [volatile organic compounds] paints, and all these things.

“Clearly the heaviest-hitting single environmental step [or] things that we can do, in what we’ve observed and what we are physically doing, is to lower the embodied carbon that goes into building.”

The current Wilson Parking on the corner of Wellington and Pier streets.

The developer is also developing Westralia Square 2 in the CBD, the first high-rise timber office building in Perth.

Westralia Square 2 will have 11 floors of office space on top of an existing multi-level car park.

GDI chief executive Stephen Burns was optimistic the market would start following GDI’s footsteps after these projects.

“Part of the reuse component ensures you’ll be able to have the best chance at producing a competitive breakeven,” he said.

“If you think of the reuse component, it is unbelievably efficient from a risk perspective, not to have to go into the ground.

“We’d love to be able to take it into relevant markets where it’s not only car parks.”

Mr Burns said two major structural shifts in the market had helped to make offices more dynamic.

“One of them is the work-from-home component, which goes to utilisation, and the second one is ESG,” he said.

“If you looked at offices 10 years ago, [they] never had any of this.

“It was more done to appeal to the CEO who might make a leasing decision: chuck a few electric cars in or a bike or a golf simulator or something like that; just something pretty token. 

“Now, it’s far more important for the makeup of the tenants to activate downstairs, for people to come down for coffee.

They don’t want to be stuck up in the space where it could just be desk by desk; you’re really using it for a lot more.”

AMB Holdings is working towards a Living Building Challenge certification. Image: Fitzpatrick+partners

Potential WA first Mining heiress Angela Bennett’s private company, AMB Holdings, will move into a new office at 126 Railway Street in Swanbourne after a development panel approved the $20 million application in late August.

The mixed office and residential hub near the train station comprises a two-storey office and a four-bedroom apartment in the residential component of the development.

AMB Holdings engaged sustainability consultancy firm Cundall for the project, with the aim to develop the first building in Western Australia, and third nationally, to achieve the international Living Building Challenge certification.

An LBC-certified building would be self-sufficient, able to generate and capture its own energy and water and have all of its material devoid of risks.

Living Future Institute of Australia chief executive Laura Hamilton-O’Hara likened the certification to a flower.

“Flowers are really suited to their climate zone,” Ms Hamilton-O’Hara told Business News.

“They don’t generate any pollution, they get all their energy from the sun, they use water without polluting it, and they go back down into the watertable.

“That’s really what LBC sets out to achieve.

“The most time-consuming piece of it all is the material setting. At the highest level what we’re asking a team to do is build with materials that are safe.

“It’s not [just] that there’s no risk of giving you cancer or affecting your indoor air quality. There has to be no risk.”

Ms Hamilton-O’Hara said two other WA projects were working towards LBC certification: a government department office, and engineering consultant Arup’s upcoming headquarters in GDI’s Westralia Square 2.

Perth-based Cundall was the first consultancy in the world to achieve carbon-neutral certification from the UK’s Carbon Trust.

Cundall associate director Oliver Grimaldi said the interest in sustainable developments in Australia had ramped up in the past decade.

While Mr Grimaldi agreed that LBC was considered the most rigorous tool in calculating sustainability, he advised businesses to get the principles right first.

“LBC is your sustainability rating tool on drugs,” he said.

“The highest rating of other recognised rating tools currently doesn’t even touch LBC.

“[But] don’t be led by a rating tool; the rating tool is just the cherry on top of good sustainable design principles.”

Mr Grimaldi advised that those designing new offices should implement the appropriate passive design principles, cut out fossil fuels, and deal with any remaining carbon through offsets if required. 

He said the interest in Australia was primarily driven by stakeholders and investors, compared to the UK where sustainability threshold for offices had primarily been led by legislation.

“When you get oil and gas companies asking for sustainability, you know the game’s on [in WA],” Mr Grimaldi told Business News.

Mr Grimaldi said Australia was still behind other jurisdictions in ensuring sustainability was a priority in developments, relying on voluntary rating tools such as NABERS or GreenStar.

“The UK requirements are stricter. In Australia, there’s no consistency between states,” he said.

“The actual standards are very low and not verified or checked. No quality assurance. It’s embarrassing, actually.

“There’s still very little leadership in WA government or council. Everything is weak on sustainability, most of it being lip service.”

Ms Hamilton-O’Hara said certification in residential buildings might be lagging but the commercial sector had made positive strides because of voluntary rating tools including NABERS and GreenStar.

She said while not every building could be LBC certified, every other building would be affected by it.

“Most of the time the manufacturers don’t know or haven’t been asked that question before and are having to dig through stuff and find out,” Ms Hamilton-O’Hara said.

“Very often if they find something they change, those products then become available to everybody.

“Those projects have these big ripple effects that any project can benefit from.”