The Living Building Challenge is an international sustainable building certification program. Created in 2006 by the International Living Future Institute, the approval process is rigorous.
According to Living Future Institute of Australia, “to be certified under the Challenge, projects must meet a series of ambitious performance requirements, including net zero energy, waste and water, over a minimum of 12 months of continuous occupancy”.[1]
But, the Living Building Challenge appears to be more just than a certification program but a philosophy that advocates the most advanced methods of sustainability for a development.
Living Building Challenge believes that the ideal built environment should be as simple and efficient, yet be analogous to the functionality and beauty of a flower. The Living Building Challenge asks architects, designers, developers and citizens alike to imagine “a building designed and constructed to function as elegantly and efficiently as a flower: a building informed by its bioregion’s characteristics, that generates all of its own energy with renewable resources, captures and treats all of its water, and that operates efficiently and for maximum beauty.”
In its first collaboration with developers Frasers Property, Living Future Institute of Australia launched a competition The Brickworks Living Building Challenge.
Based in Burwood East, Melbourne, it is Australia’s first Living Building Challenge design competition, and the first in the world that focused on a retail centre.
Frasers Property have promised to incorporate “a range of sustainability measures including a large solar PV system and an embedded electricity network to target a minimum 5 star green star in design”
This excites us. Immensely.
[1] https://living-future.org.au/about/living-building-challenge/