Monash University’s Woodside Building for Technology and Design

Jointly funded by the university and Woodside to support Australia’s low-carbon energy transition through the development of a ‘living laboratory’ for teaching and research.

The Woodside Building for Technology and Design is one of the most efficient and innovative buildings in Australia, the largest Passive House project in the Southern Hemisphere and the world’s largest Passive House educational facilities.

Passive House is an internationally recognised accreditation for buildings that achieve higher standards of thermal comfort, energy efficiency and lower energy costs. Aurecon’s integrated design approach, with project partners Lendlease and Grimshaw Architects, created the all-electric building as a ‘living laboratory’ to redefine benchmarks in building design, teaching and research. Woodside was selected as one of only 17 initiatives worldwide to be showcased at the COP26 UN Climate Conference ‘Build Better Now’ virtual pavilion.

In a series of integrated design workshops, the building was co-designed together using the specialist skills of each participating organisation. The detailing of the building envelope elements was designed to interface with the structure and building services, in a construction methodology that supported the design elements.

Examples of this include:

• The ducting design was optimised for the smallest pressure drop while allowing the other building services to be reticulated throughout the building.
• The outside air flow is accurately controlled via constant air volume dampers to maintain air balancing at all times of operation.
• Room occupancy sensors allow the fan coil units to switch off when no one is present, saving energy. The units are fitted with energy saving initiatives, for instance motorised diffusers that provide variable air volume to selected spaces.
• Gas is traditionally used to generate a building’s heating hot water and domestic hot water. On this building, CO2 heat pumps generate domestic hot water and air-sourced heat pumps are used for heating the interior spaces. During the selection of the heat pumps system, the practical factors of plant footprint, maintenance access, and the ability to effectively reject the heating load, were considered.
• The chosen solar photovoltaic system reduces the risk of soiling and the system makes use of four inverters to ensure there’s limited overshading on the panels. It has an installed capacity of 230kWp (kilowatts peak).

The integrated design approach allowed the team to collaborate and test-fit the most highly-efficient and value-for-money technical solutions. In terms of hierarchy, the building geometry and orientation was determined first. The treated floor area and thermal envelope’s properties were next.

After this base line was established for the passive measures, partner organisations considered the building services to evaluate how best to operate the ventilation system, and then iteratively worked towards finalising renewable energy supply (solar photovoltaic).

The intent was to always balance the heat loads and heat losses. The partners involved in this complex building have gained further skills in the area of sustainable design and construction in the built environment. This will benefit the Australian construction industry as other similar projects are undertaken to decarbonise the built environment.