BUILDING BETTER AT THE WAO SUMMIT
The Wao Summit consisted of over 40 different events across Queenstown and Wānaka from 29 October to 3 November.
On the 31st of October Wao held a full day of better building events, primarily at the Luggate Memorial Centre, which Matthew Cutler-Welsh (of the New Zealand Green Building Council) notably pointed out as being New Zealand's first non-residential passive certified building.
The day started with a Better Building Brekkie at Mitre 10 with nearly 100 tradies and other attendee before moving onto morning discussions around the current state of the sector at Luggate.
The more than 100 attendees heard first from Dr. Carly Green (Environmental Accounting Services) on the state of our climate and the impact the construction sector can have on helping to reduce emissions, before than hearing from QLDC's Senior Sustainability Advisor Katherine Buttar around the local construction and demolition (C&D) waste concerns.
Over 900 tonnes of waste is sent to the Southern Lakes only landfill, Victoria Flats, every week and about 34% or 309 tonnes of that is C&D waste, a lot of which can be diverted by using concepts from the waste hierarchy and circular economy principles.
Buttar strongly encouraged local attendees to provide suggestions and ideas into the new draft Waste Management and Minimisation Plan (WMMP) by putting down their thoughts on the idea board HERE.
The session ended with a crowd engaging presentation from Matthew Cutler-Welsh who showed what good building designs look like and require compared to not so good ones.
He made an astonishing point that most countries around the world have air tightness requirements, however New Zealand was not one of them. Airtightness is among a number of factors that contribute to significant heating and cooling issues across homes in Aotearoa.
After a short break the buzzing room reconvened for a group of presentations from innovative building concepts. Tricia Love presented on the Living Building Challenge. Vicki Spearing on her cash-back development scheme, Bellbird Developments. Stephan Mäusli on Hector Eggar’s prefabricated timber panels, and Sam Stubbs on Simplicity Living’s Build to Rent scheme.
It was an excellent transition from first hearing about what work needs to be done in the building sector, to seeing real life solutions.
After lunch participants had the choice of attending two of five different hands on workshops, or masterclasses.
The first time slot gave the choice of attending the Integrated Design and Materials Circularity by ahha Architects or NZGBC’s Homestar Masterclass led by Arthur Lee of the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust.
The second session had the well praised Biophilic Design masterclass from Tricia Love and Miranda Brown. However, just as well received was the Carbon Counting workshop from TMCO and a dual on-site visit taking place at a local residential build and Breen’s under construction full timber build offices.
In these sessions, participants had the opportunity to work together closely with hands-on tasks, work through realistic design problems, pick up important statistics and see first hand sustainable building practices.
The day finished with a Better Building Banter session at Wānaka’s Ground Up Brewing. An excellent space for everyone to come together and share what they had picked up on the day and network with others in their field. There was a short panel discussion from some of the workshop presenters led by Matthew Cutler-Welsh before calling it a night!
If you want to know more, or pick up some of the presentation slides, email betterbuilding@wao.co.nz.
