DWB Down Under
It is with huge excitement and delight that we are able to announce the launch of the Australian chapter of ‘Don’t Waste Buildings’ .
“There is a huge danger we won’t meet our environmental commitments if we don’t accelerate the case for the productive use of empty and underperforming buildings. Not only for the sake of sufficiency and embodied carbon but also for much needed housing and social infrastructure quicker and at a lower cost.”
Last week, eight passionate built environment professionals came together in Melbourne to focus on a theme we are hugely passionate about and in which we want to see more acceleration and traction – Retrofit and Adaptive Re-Use.
We discussed the UK DWB initiative and started to plan how this will move forward in Australia, with an initial focus in Victoria.
Don’t Waste Buildings is the voluntary effort to put a spotlight on embodied carbon through highlighting case studies of real life adaptive re-use completed projects and what can be achieved, as well as how to navigate some of the existing hurdles, whilst also advocating for financial and tax incentives and planning reforms to support retrofit.
‘There is a huge danger we won’t meet our environmental commitments if we don’t accelerate the case for the productive use of empty and underperforming buildings. Not only for the sake of sufficiency and embodied carbon but also for much needed housing and social infrastructure quicker and at a lower cost," said Claire Bowles, Director, Okana ANZ and founding lead for the DWB Australia chapter.
We discussed the nature of existing buildings as untapped economic and social assets, not structures to be casually discarded and how they can be utilised to deliver much-needed housing and development at greater speed, lower cost and with less of an impact on our environment.
Claire Bowles
Our intention for the Australian chapter is follow the UK format in remaining non-party political and not part of any association, but rather run by a collection of individual volunteers made up of leading property developers, financiers, architects, engineers, planners and others, with no membership fees, sponsorship or commercial interests of any kind, thus maintaining independence and existing solely to support the objective:
To influence the introduction of policy, regulation and financial incentives to make the reuse of existing buildings simpler and more profitable in order to stimulate growth in the Australian housing and development sector.
You can see Claire’s profile and connect with her on LinkedIn HERE, and please send us a message if you’d like to get involved with the new Australia Chapter.