Background

New Zealand has a relatively temperate climate with comparatively few high peaks or lows in our temperature range, and large sunlight hours, making New Zealand the perfect place to situate naturally ventilated Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) buildings.  By orientating the building and controlling the façade treatment to best suit its specific location, significant reductions can be made in energy consumption and improvements in internal environmental conditions.

ESD buildings are common in Europe and the United States but the technology included within these buildings is expensive.  Key to the integration of ESD features within New Zealand buildings is cost effectiveness.  The additional costs are hard to determine but commonly mentioned figures are in the 10-15% range.  In order to propose cost effective solutions to the ESD features the designer must have a fundamental understanding of the principles of ESD.  In the case of Site 7, all components within the building are known technologies available “off the shelf” but are used in unusual ways or combined together to get the desired result.

The energy consumption of buildings can vary enormously, and the effect on national energy consumption is significant, according to a 2001 EECA paper entitled “Introduction to Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings”.  The paper indicates that in New Zealand, commercial and industrial buildings account for approximately 8% of New Zealand’s national energy consumption and 5% of CO2 emissions (as well as about one-third of landfill rubbish during construction).  In the case of Site 7, we have achieved 80kw p.a which is significant when we consider that most office buildings operate around 260kw p.a.

Proponents of sustainably designed buildings claim even greater potential benefits from enhanced staff productivity – they say environmentally sustainable buildings are less prone to problems associated with sick building syndrome.  The EECA report notes gains in productivity and reductions in absenteeism of between 5 and 15 percent commonly recorded in environmentally sustainable buildings.