Article#2 Melbournes Council House 2- ENGINEERS MAG VOL 79

Melbourne’s council house 2 has been the first new multistorey building to receive a six star energy rating. The ten storey high building will during October after it has stood for a year find out whether it has lived up to its’ name.
The 77 million dollar building stands in Little Collin Street in Melbourne CBD was never designed to be a technical masterpiece. The aim of the building was not to impress by sight but to impress by proving such a building is possible. The director of the project said the aim was to set a benchmark for the rest of the industry.
This building will reduce electricity consumption by 85% and gas consumption by up to 93%. Emissions will be 20% less of the current Council House standing next door.
Some of the technical devices installed in the building to allow for these huge reductions are phase-change materials for air-conditioning, automatic windows that purge air at night, façade louvres that follow the sun and are themselves powered by photovoltaic cells, chilled panels, and plants to filter light. The building has a huge concrete core which acts as a thermal mass to assist cooling.
The building has a built in treatment system to extract the sewer running underneath Little Collins Street This system applies this treated water to such thing as toilets.
One of the difficulties when approaching this project was educating the people in the construction and building part of the project that something like this could be built and how.