Subscribe to new articles and posts

Productive vertical villages.

Visualisation: Charles Lin

At around 2015 the residential towers of Melbourne, characteristic of the early 21st century, began a range of conversions. The older buildings had simply become culturally and economically undesirable and unviable. Many of these conversions were inspired by the success of early innovators such as CH2, illustrating that a building that collects resources and is environmentally efficient could also be economically viable and desirable.

Site Two is one of these buildings. It is located on the water front in a bay-side suburb and underwent an extensive refit around 2015. The refit transformed the building socially and technically. What was previously a relative unproductive social monoculture can now be best described as a productive vertical village.

Site Two makes proficient collection and intelligent use of environmental resources, assisting occupants in meeting their environmental targets. The building has very low air conditioning demands and is efficient and productive with environmental resources. Its skin is an active environmental filter, providing insulation, insolation and a natural and intelligently designed ventilation system. The skin captures rainwater (much more rain falls on the sides of tall buildings than on the top), solar energy (integrated photovoltaic windows) and wind energy (through micro turbines distributed along the façade). The building also makes use of its exposure to the winds across the bay, generating electricity from a wind turbine on its roof.

The operation of the building depends on specialist service engineers such as Keith (see: Site One) who maintain the building’s technical and environmental systems. In the buildings redevelopment, redundant spaces previously occupied by large mechanical systems and car parks, were converted into resource storage and systems management areas. This area now houses the rainwater and stormwater collection tanks along with the accompanying onsite water treatment and recycling systems (black water mining, filtration and CHP distillation unit) and the energy systems centre.

Intelligent electricity and water consumption meters advise residents of their current (and projected) use, and provide guidance for consumers to modify their use for load limiting. Keith services many of the occupants of this building with water management systems to ensure that the apartment systems and appliances are running as efficiently as possible.

However as mentioned the environmental and technical transformation was accompanied by social transformations changing the building from being an outdated tower to a vertical village. Prior to its refit, this tower was principally a mixture of studio and two bedroom apartments. The redevelopment aimed at increasing the diversity of apartment types. Some apartments were amalgamated and penthouses refitted to accommodate mixed residential and business suites, and housing for extended families and share households. By providing bigger and more flexible apartments for larger households, residential diversity was increased significantly. The new vertical community reflected a more conventional social structure previously seen in ‘horizontal’ ground level communities.

Larger apartments were also found to be more environmentally efficient, with a greater number of people sharing the same facilities. In the case of water this translated to less wet-space and water-using appliances per person. Other social and environmental transformations can be observed in how the lifts of this tower operate. The lifts of this building now stop at every third floor, with residents walking down or up between floors (those with less physical ability live near to lifts). This small transformation has not only speed up the lifts and reduced their energy use, but has also generated a more socially intensive life in the foyer public spaces (and moderately improved resident fitness).

The social transformation also included space for creatively subsided and low cost apartments. The growth of intensive service industries that were needed to support these revitalised districts and buildings led to a demand for affordable housing, in a larger range of styles. The once common trend of service commuters travelling to luxury districts from less economically wealthier suburbs was no longer viable.

The building has been designed to incorporate ’serviced living’. This not only changes the way people satisfy needs but also affects the structure of the building and the layout of apartments. For instance each apartment has a secure cooled service delivery area which allows them to ‘take deliveries’ at any time. Serviced living also allows for a mix of commercial and residential activity within the building.

Examples of services that are available to occupants of the building include:

• Laundromat for centralised, efficient laundering and professional garment care (with the best quality, most efficient systems).
• Groceries delivery service for the provisioning of fresh food, semi-prepared meals, and other consumables. Many meals are consumed and prepared communally, for instance market restaurants and restaurant delivery services have become popular.
• Public bathing and spa facilities provide a more efficient centralised water treatment and recycling systems. The return to public bathing allows people to have a more luxurious bathing experience than they are able to do in their homes.
• Whitegoods and household equipment providers service the apartments, leasing intelligent domestic appliances. Companies maintain and replace these through servicing contracts.
• Furniture and art services that allow for flexibility and choice in how residents decorate their homes.
• Public offices and conferencing rooms allowing for decentralised working, suiting the more flexible work patterns that are now commonplace.
• Fitness and health systems are personally managed, intelligent systems communicate fitness, diet and basic health

The great cost of transformations for buildings such as these was met in a range of ways and with a range of successes. In some cases changes were more minor and successful, in others inhabitants managed to bear exceptional costs of outdated building systems. The great successes were mostly from existing body corporate that innovated in both their technical solutions and the financial models to fund the redesigns. These groups saw surprisingly rapid payback for their efforts.

Meet Violet one of the residents.