One of Australia’s most awarded developers and a globally acclaimed architect have joined forces to lodge a development application with Brisbane City Council for the greenest residential building in the world labelled “The Urban Forest”.
30 floors high building, comprising of vertical sky gardens, sculpturesque stepped facades and an open public park, sets out to redefine the conventions of green architecture.
This project by Brisbane-based Aria Property Group introduces landscape as an active component of its design. As a green spine connecting the Southbank Parklands with Musgrave Park, the building will feature over 1000 trees and 20,000 plants selected from the native species. This ‘green’ treatment accounts for more than five times the number of trees found in the nearby Musgrave Park.
Comprising 300 per cent site cover with living greenery, Urban Forest is anticipated as a cleaner, greener oasis in the middle of the city. Among its sustainable design strategies are façade vegetation for thermal insulation, solar panels to generate renewable energy and gardens for irrigating harvested rainwater.
“Urban Forest is probably the greenest we can design with the current ‘greening’ tools and regulations available to us,” says Koichi Takada, the Sydney-based architect and principal of Koichi Takada Architects.
Through the lens of this project, Koichi Takada stresses on the need to shift to ‘mass greening’ as against mass production that was adopted as a result of industrial revolution. He also emphasises on the need to evaluate materiality in architecture given the times we are living in. Inspired by the best green buildings around the world, specifically the Bosco Verticale in Italy and aims to achieve architectural excellence for Brisbane as a sub-tropical city.
“It has been incredibly humbling to be recognised by one of the world’s visionaries in sustainability and care for the future of our world. Sir Attenborough is an icon throughout the world and we want to bring this project to life and realise a part of his vision.” – says Michael Hurley, Development Manager of Aria Property Group.
Urban Forest will feature world class lighting design and will become a benchmark for Brisbane’s Buildings that Breathe policy and a foundation for a new wave of ‘green architecture’ for high-rise constructions of the future.
Images: Aria Property Group
Haute Today 