Welcome, everyone to 100 Climate Conversations. Thank you for joining us today.

Before we go any further, I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the ancestral homelands upon which we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We respect their Elders, past, present and future and recognise their continuous connection to Country.

My name is Pat Abboud and I am delighted to be back here for 100 Climate Conversations. Today is number 55 of 100 conversations happening every Friday. The series presents 100 visionary Australians that are taking positive action to respond to the most critical issue of our time, climate change.

We are recording live today in the Boiler Hall of the Powerhouse museum. Before it was home to the museum, it was the Ultimo Power Station built in 1899. I can see Philip admiring the architecture. It supplied coal powered electricity to Sydney’s tram system into the 1960s. In the context of this architectural artefact, we shift our focus forward to the innovations of the net zero revolution. Philip Vivian is an architect, urban designer and director of Bates Smart, where he has led the Sydney studio since 1998. Vivian’s passion for sustainable urbanism has helped shape Sydney’s architecture, transport and public domain, allowing the city’s successful development as it grows. We’re so thrilled to have you join us today, Philip. Thank you for making the time. Please join me in making him feel very welcome.

Let’s start off with a really broad question. What power does architecture have to take action on climate?

So, cities account for 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. So really, architects are designing cities, and cities are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions. There was actually an Internet entrepreneur, a guy called Tony Xi, who once said, if we fix cities, we fix the world, because really, they’re the emitters.

Some other statistics: Construction accounts for 39 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The operational energy in buildings alone, 28 per cent. So, if we can reduce those things, we’re reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And then finally, just cement alone is 8 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. And if cement was a country, it’d be the third biggest emitter in the world. So, everything – from how we design cities to what materials we use – which architects have an influence on, has an impact on climate change.

Wow, incredibly startling numbers. So, how many people live in cities right now around the world?

So, I think it’s 53 or 55 per cent.

And that’s probably a really big jump, right? Because the stats haven’t always been that high.

So 1900, I think 10 per cent of the world population lived in cities. It’s been increasing ever since then. And we are heading in 2050 to about 75 per cent of the global population. I think, we are 7 billion now. We’re going to 9 billion in the next 25 odd years. So, how are we going to accommodate all those extra people in cities and be more sustainable?

How did you develop a love for architecture? Tell me how you fell in love with what you do.

As a child, I just loved drawing. My godfather was an architect. I grew up in Perth and he was quite a prominent architect in Perth, and I spent a lot of time at his house. My father was very sick when I was young, so I used to live with him part time and he’d take me to building sites, so we’d walk around building sites. He was actually – I’ll tell you an interesting connection – he designed Perth Council House in the early 60s, which is covered in these gorgeous T-shaped sunshades. It’s a stunning building and it’s just been heritage listed. But he designed that with his partner, and they won a competition while they were working for Bates Smart and McCutcheon, which is the firm I’m now a partner of. So, he moved from Melbourne from that firm, and they put this building together covered in sunshades at the same time Bates Smart in the 50s and 60s was doing buildings that were exploring the use of sunshades on what were previously all glass buildings.

Speaking of change, you’re currently director of Bates Smart and have been working in the industry for over three decades now. How have considerations around climate change and sustainability evolved in that time?

It has really changed. If I go back to the early to late 90s or mid to late 90s, we were trying to do buildings as sustainably as we could. We were doing what I call in that period ‘green design’ or ‘sustainable design’. So, we had passive sunshades on our buildings. We tried to get natural ventilation into spaces, particularly lobbies and so forth. We were trying to reduce operational energy. We were trying to say, why have 400 lux everywhere? Why not have 200 lux and task lighting if you need it. So, bring it down. We were talking about – at that point, air conditioning was a very tight thing. It was 22.5 degrees plus or minus one. And we were saying, why not make it plus or minus three degrees? And it’s okay to wear slightly more clothes in winter and have a summer dress.

So, we were talking about these things, but sustainable design in that period was trying to be less bad. And accounting for carbon wasn’t a thing. We were just comparing ourselves to business as usual and doing better. I think when the conferences started and I remember the Kyoto Protocol, which I think was ’97 or ’98, we became aware that really what we should be focusing on is the impact on climate change.

And as we progressed through the early noughties, we started to shift to wondering how we can reduce carbon. And the aim became how do we become net zero? How do we bring our operational energy down? How do we bring our embodied energy down? And particularly when you come to, say, the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to one and a half or two degrees. The whole shift came from not being just less bad, but actually let’s get to net zero. We cannot omit either embodied energy or operational energy in our buildings.

And so, I think that that to me is the mid period, and that’s when we started doing buildings in timber and we’ll talk later I think about a building that we’ve done that’s all timber, but we’ve also been doing buildings where we’ve said, ‘Let’s use timber wherever we can. It might not be all timber, but let’s replace traditional steel and concrete with timber in the areas where it has the most impact.’

That’s a great segway; from first conception to the completion of a build, what role and responsibility do architects like yourself have when it comes to sustainability outcomes? And you touching on it there, one of the things is material choice, right? But that’s not the only thing.

Yes. So, look, I think we have the most impact at the early stages. There is a graph that shows that as the design progresses, you can have less and less impact. But right at the beginning, when you’re talking to a client and in fact, right from the get-go, if you can talk about let’s do something that’s sustainable, why don’t we try using timber? Do we really need to fully air-condition this building. Why don’t we have areas that are naturally ventilated? Those conversations before the pen even hits paper are absolutely paramount to getting the best outcome.

So generally speaking, what sort of response do you get? Are people more conscious now than they were, say, even five years ago around sustainability?

Absolutely, yes. So, we often get a warm response. There’s a lot more listening. Look the firm I’m a partner of, we do fairly large work. With developers there’s always the question of cost. So, what’s this going to cost me? We try to flip that on its head and say, ‘You can’t afford not to do it because people now want to be in sustainable buildings. So, do you want to build a building that might be empty because it’s not attracting tenants or people to live in it?’

It’s flipping the narrative. What’s it going to cost the environment as opposed to what’s it going to cost you.

What’s it going to cost the environment? And we also talk their language. If you just want to build an ordinary building, it could be empty because companies and staff are all looking to live in sustainable buildings.

Bates Smart was one of the founding signatories for Architects Declare, which I think is a really interesting project, and I would love you to tell us more about Architects Declare and how a group like that can facilitate action on climate.

So, Architects Declare really started in the UK as a group of architects, and its Architects Declare a Biodiversity and Climate Emergency is the full title and this started off with 10 and is now 12 principles that we’ve all signed up for. And what they amount to is effectively helping influence our clients. So, I talk to them about how we talk to our clients upfront about how do we make our building more sustainable, use sustainable materials, lower energy use, get the right consultants to talk to our clients about that. And really what this does is embed those principles in a declaration and we can say to our clients, ‘Look, we’ve committed to Architects Declare, and if we’re going to work with you, we need you to commit to these principles as well.’

So, it gives us – it is sort of what we always did, but it gives us a little more teeth to say we’re now part of and in Australia there’s a thousand signatories to Architects Declare, I’m not sure how many in the UK, but it just says we’re part of this movement. It also commits us to say if people aren’t prepared to go on that journey with us and they’re not interested in doing something sustainable, then it’s not a commission that we want to take. So, it just puts it front and centre of what we do and our commitment. We hope now we can start communicating what is important. What do people need to think about for buildings of the future. Because the thing is, we build a building, they are around for a long time, 50, 100 years. It has that impact and if it’s got too much embodied carbon that can never be rereleased.

Yes. And there are ways – I suppose you’re getting in from the get go to prevent that from happening essentially. So, let’s talk about 25 King. In 2018 Bates Smart completed 25 King in Brisbane. It was Australia’s tallest engineered timber office – well it is Australia’s tallest engineered timber office building. Can you describe the look and feel of the building to us?

Okay, so 25 King, it’s 100 per cent what we call CLT, cross laminated timber building. So, everything is timber, even the core is timber and above ground. So, below ground is not timber because there’s white ants and moisture issues. So, above ground you’re looking at a building that is 100 per cent timber.

It has a veranda that’s raised up on a series of V columns. Timber doesn’t span as far as concrete, so it tends to have a lot of columns and we tend to try and group them together in Vs so there’s less columns on the ground floor. But it has this colonnade of V columns that creates a generous veranda colonnade at the entry. When you come into the building, it’s using natural materials. We’re reducing the number of materials. It has a biophilic wall, a green wall, and all the plants are angled towards the light. So, you’re really feeling like you’re in a very natural and biophilic environment. And one of the nice things I’ve noticed is people, you know, in a way that people want to touch timber, people want to touch natural materials.

As opposed to concrete.

As opposed to concrete.

Why is that do you think?

I don’t – you never find people rubbing a concrete column in an almost friendly way. But if people walk past a timber column and will just rub it. An interesting story, when I was a student, I used to work in a bakery. And the lady who ran the bakery, we had very long queues and sometimes it was all too much for her and she just walked out the back and there was this beautiful big, massive fig tree and she’d just go out the back and hug this tree and it was too big for her to get around. But she would just hug the tree for a few minutes and be totally revitalised.

Well, that’s biophilia in practise right there.

Yes. People feel that need to connect to nature and it regenerates you. And I think if you’re in a timber building, that feeling of connection to natural materials and nature is there and I think it’s healthier. You feel not like you’re in this concrete and plasterboard building, you’re in a natural environment.

So, this is architecture tapping into people’s emotion.

Absolutely.

Yes, wow. Why is it such an important achievement?

So, the building was designed for Lendlease, it was first designed around 2012. It’s in Fortitude Valley, so it’s a city fringe office building. It’s about 15,000 square metres net and it sat there for five years, no tenants, and that’s because it was simply competing on cost. And were they cheaper than any other building nearby. So, suddenly the decision was made, let’s look at timber and instantly we got a tenant, a major tenant, that’s one of the engineering companies. They did the engineering in the building. By changing the construction, we created tenants, we created value and it’s one of the things we talk to our clients about.

So, this building though, had to then be built for the exact same price that a standard concrete office building would be built for in a city fringe location. So often, look, there are other timber buildings in Australia and some of those are absolutely beautiful as well, but some of them are demonstration projects where there’s been extra money. What’s important about 25 King is that it was built for the exact same budget that you would build a regular concrete building. And so, what it shows is this is not about spending more money to do something and to kind of virtue signal. And it’s saying at least – so, this building’s 10 storeys – at least in that mid-rise you can build, and we should be building all our buildings out of timber.

The taller you go, it becomes harder and harder to use timber. But as we go taller, we try to replace concrete with timber. Although you can end up with a concrete core and timber floors and the taller you go, the harder it is to use natural materials. But we’re always trying. But in that mid-rise range, like for like we should be building in timber, there’s no excuse.

Wow you’re very – that’s an underlined full stop statement there. There’s no doubt in that at all.

There isn’t.

Can you tell us more about engineered or cross laminated timber and how it reduces carbon emissions? Because I can see you’re clearly passionate about transforming people’s minds to make them understand that using timber to build is not only aesthetically pleasing, but it’s clearly having impact. So, how does it actually work to reduce carbon emissions?

So, clearly we’re growing forests to harvest that timber, those forests are sequestering carbon into the timber, so we are sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere. So, it’s a highly sustainable product. For people who don’t understand what cross laminated timber is, it’s not solid core timber, it’s a series of layers and each one is at 90 degrees, so they’re thin layers and timber generally has strength in one direction or the other. And by cross laminating the layers, you get something that’s very strong and you’re not having to find huge trees and cut down 100-year-old trees to get major beams. You can build them up.

You’re reinforcing it, you can still get large beams. The thing that’s changed it of course, there are older buildings, so a lot of the warehouses in Pyrmont where we are a timber, but they were cutting down old growth forests. These are made out of new growth forests that are made for harvesting and built up.

What’s happened is construction has now been automated, so you have CNC routing machines that can cut this timber absolutely precisely. So, you can build it up, cut it, and it comes to site as the exact piece. All the holes are drilled, and it literally goes together like a Meccano set. And if you’ve ever seen a steel building go together where the beams all arrive and the bolts are in exactly the right place, it’s very, very similar and it goes together cleanly, there’s no waste. So, when you go to a concrete site there is incredible amounts of waste. It’s almost medieval building a concrete building. There’s water, there’s waste, there’s dirt, there’s noise, there’s people knocking down scaffolding. It’s not a pleasant environment. And you go to a timber building site, the whole noise level comes right down. It’s quiet. Everyone’s behaviour, curiously, is much more respectful.

I’ll just give you one simple thing, concrete buildings have graffiti everywhere. You’re probably aware of the sort of silly graffiti you get from builders. There’s no graffiti on a timber building site. People respect the material. They do not draw things on it and it’s quiet. And so, I think everyone else is respecting each other much more. It goes together very quickly and very quietly and very respectfully and without that waste. So, it’s literally something that transforms the industry and the builders and their attitudes. And I can imagine look, I haven’t ever worked all day on a building site, but that constant clanging and kind of – you would go home and be very stressed.

Why is it that, for example, I live in Marrickville, a huge, huge development going on at the moment. It’s been gentrified at a rapid rate. I don’t see any buildings being built from timber. It’s all concrete. What’s holding the industry back? If the benefit is so clear and the cost is equatable to building the timber.

I think it’s two things. It’s awareness and I think there’s not that general awareness yet. And then there’s a fear of doing something different. I think the industry is very geared up to do what it did last time and do it again and again and again. And when you try to do something different –

Which is why we see these cookie cutter buildings that developers come in and build.

And doing something different, interestingly, costs more only because the builder doesn’t know how to do it. And so, they’re going to price in risk. Once it becomes more normalised, the cost comes down. And so, timber up until a few years ago, people were putting 25 to 30 per cent additional cost on it. Now the one we did Lendlease committed, and they were the builder and the developer. They haven’t ever told us what the final cost was, but they were very surprised at how quickly it went together, and it cost a lot less than they had originally thought. Now I think the industry is changing. I think there’s much greater awareness. You go back five or 10 years and there was still debates even in Parliament of was climate change a thing? I think that scepticism, I think we’ve moved on from that debate and the science is proven. And so, I think now industries, yes, it’s solutions. How do we get there?

Just before we move on. Can you in a nutshell go back to how it reduces carbon emissions?

So, the statistic that 25 King has is it reduced 74 per cent of embodied carbon compared to a concrete building.

Wow, that’s remarkable.

It’s massive and that’s just in construction. The interesting thing then is the timber goes on, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere for about two years after construction. So, it keeps absorbing that carbon and has another additional net benefit. The thing that interests me, though, is that we still talk about, well, it’s 75 per cent less. Now that’s 75 per cent less than current business as usual. I want to flip that on its head and say, ‘Well, actually that should be the norm. And if you want to build a concrete building, it will take four times as much carbon to build a normal building.’

It’s crystal clear then.

And at that point, you know, someone like Greta Thunberg would say, ‘How dare you? How can you use four times as much in body carbon?’

Yes. It’s painting a very clear picture. Since the completion of 25 King are you seeing greater usage of engineered timber in Australia and across the world?

We’re doing a lot more projects in timber, so we’ve just finished one which there was an existing I think it was about six, seven storey office building, and we added a hotel on the top and all of that was built in CLT. This is in Australia, it’s in Melbourne, it’s in Southbank and is, I think it’s a 10-storey hotel on top of a six or seven storey concrete office building. But because the timber’s lighter we didn’t have to reinforce the existing structure, or the norm would have been to demolish that existing building and just build it all again from scratch.

So firstly, saving the existing building, not demolishing and building again, and then building much more sustainably on top – so, we’re recycling the existing building stock – is highly sustainable and probably one of the most sustainable things we can do, to be honest, is not build, recycle existing buildings. So, not kind of use new materials. But when we do, let’s use the most sustainable building materials that we can. That’s an example of recycling.

And then I think post 25 King, all the buildings we’re doing, as I said before, is we’re looking at areas where we can replace concrete with timber. Now, in a lot of the buildings, say office buildings, we’re trying to create break out spaces that are naturally ventilated, have gardens or outdoor terraces, and we try to use those as full CLT timber buildings, so replace areas with CLT so people at least have a space to go that’s connected to natural ventilation, connected to biophilia, connected to natural materials like timber. And it’s just part of that replacing and doing whatever we can.

The question I have, though, is how do you retrofit but also maintain local character, particularly in a place like Melbourne, because Melbourne has retained some of its sort of traditional architecture, which is very beautiful.

Yes.

How do you retrofit but also sort of maintain that? So, the vibe of the city, if you like.

So I think, you know, we should – whenever there’s an existing building, we should be thinking, can we keep it? Can we refurbish it? It’s far more sustainable to keep the existing building stock. Can we add on top of it? That is a more sustainable solution to the future of the city than demolition. And I think we’ve just gone through a massive cycle if we take the last 70 odd years of, we have demolished so much of our heritage and really, we’ve got to stop. And even if it’s not heritage, can we just use the existing structural frame? So, structure accounts for about 50 per cent of embodied carbon. Even if we take facades off and really rebuild the building, can we keep what’s there and so not use carbon unnecessarily and just recycle buildings, refurbish, recycle and reuse. Can we add on top of them in a sustainable way? And timber is a great solution because it’s lightweight, so you don’t need to reinforce the existing structure.

Is that a trend do you think you’ll see emerging more and more?

Absolutely. I think you’ll see a lot of buildings being refurbished. There is old building stock that’s coming up and people are looking at it and going that’s not a building of the future. I think rather than demolish and rebuild, we will see those buildings get recycled, adaptively reused.

Yes. It’s a beautiful thought. Its so lovely to hear the sort of hopeful sentiment in your voice as you speak. You are the president of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. You’re looking at building –

Only President in Australia. Just – yes, not of the whole organisation.

That’s still a big job. You’re looking at building up rather than building out with urban sprawl, which is something that I referenced before seeing in suburbs. It’s sort of going this way rather than up.

Yes.

How can higher density living benefit communities and the climate?

I’m interested in density, higher density as a more sustainable option. So, that can look like a city like Paris, which is a mid-rise city. It can look like a city like New York, which is a high-rise city. And to me, I think actually a vibrant city is probably a mix of the two. I think it’s not without some buildings that are tall. The advantage of being tall sometimes is that you can create beautiful open spaces on the ground.

The problem with sprawl is it’s super low density. It means that people are car dependent, so you must use cars to go everywhere. It’s pedestrian unfriendly and cars are a high carbon form of transport. Low density doesn’t work for public transport, so you don’t have public transport. So, everyone is driving cars. They’re not walking or cycling. So, it’s got health implications. And of course, it’s just spreading and using up arable land and spreading roads and cars everywhere.

So, to me, the sprawl, suburban sprawl is the coal of urbanism. It’s just this high carbon form of living. So, I believe cities need to stop sprawling. And you go back to cities like Portland, Oregon, which 40 years ago put what’s a red line around the outside and said, we don’t grow anymore. Even London has a green belt all the way around the outside and you can grow up to there or they jump the green belt. Now that’s what we need to do. We’ve got to stop sprawling in Australian cities. We need to have what I’m going to call polycentric cities. So, if you look at the Australian model – Sydney’s heading towards polycentricity – but if you look at post-World War II, Australian cities were monocentric. We had a CBD that was high rise and then we just went to one or two stories forever and ever and ever.

I think what we’ve got to do now is and we’re building it in city metro lines. We’ve got heavy rail lines. And where those occur around those stations, we need to build in higher densities, not necessarily high rise, but clusters of high density. That does not say there aren’t any more suburbs. There’s a lot of space between stations that is for low rise. But in 800 metres around a train station stop, so 10 minutes walking distance, we should have high-density mixed-use centres connected to public transport where people can walk to work or walk to public transport. There should be schools there. There should be public open space in these nodes of density.

So, Philip, what you’ve talked about there is I suppose, some of the challenges that urban sprawl presents, but is high density living the solution to slowing urban sprawl.

So, when we say slow it, as I said, I would like to advocate for a red line that says no more. Don’t build out. Start reflecting back in on where we’re spending a lot of money on infrastructure and around that infrastructure, we need higher density. We also need more affordable housing. But I think we’re also, if we look at the Australian building stock, the vast majority of it is single family homes and that doesn’t represent our modern lifestyle. People need apartments, perhaps – certainly when you’re young and working, you can probably live in an apartment. At a certain age maybe if you’re having children, you might need a backyard. But I think we need a lot more choice and the ability to live closer in communities that are walkable, have community facilities, shops, etc., where you can connect with other people.

I do believe we still have an affordability crisis and for key workers and that is a challenge in Sydney, but across Australia it’s a challenge we need to meet. You can see I’m a passionate advocate of density and what I’d like to see is that when we build this infrastructure and the state government’s putting it in. I’d like to see state government say, ‘Okay, if you’re within an 800-metre radius of that, we will give you extra density, but you give it back to us as affordable housing.’

Why not within 400 metres? You can get 20 per cent extra density over what the original density was or 800 metres you get 10 per cent extra density and it’s affordable. So, actually the government’s saying, ‘I’ll give it to you, but you give us the affordable housing we need.’

I suppose the proof is in the pudding, right? So, are the Australian examples of these high-density cities that you’re describing, highly liveable, connected communities in Australia.

Look, I think Sydney’s starting to develop as a polycentric city, so we do have clusters of high density and obviously we’ve got Sydney City, but you’ve got North Sydney, Chatswood, St Leonards and Macquarie Park, you go on and on. I think the big challenge with a lot of those centres is they are what I’m going to call mono-functional. So, they’re zoned for commercial, and they don’t allow residential.

So we’re talking about the CBD?

We’re talking about all of those CBD’s tend to promote commercial and try to exclude residential. And look, it’s a very old planning idea. It comes out of a group called CIAM, it’s a group from mid-twentieth century European architects who promoted the functional zoning of cities. And we still have that functional zoning embedded in our zoning practices. And yet you look at all the great cities of the world and they’re not mono-functional at all. You’ve got people living – you look at downtown Manhattan and you’ve got as many high-rise living apartments as commercial buildings, and that’s what makes cities vibrant and liveable.

They’re not just 9 to 5 cities, they’re people after work, dining, entertaining, going to bars. You need that mix of functions. And we still have restrictions. So, what I find is we’ve got – we’re starting to get density along rail lines, and it will evolve further as metro comes on. But we need to have mixed use cities where you can live and work. And that’s a mind shift for Australian planners.

Look, we aren’t short on innovations. It’s clear that you’re – that’s the world you’re working in, you’re working for the future, you’re creating for the future, and you’re designing buildings for the future, which is really exciting. You know, there are many passionate people like yourself with these holistic visions for the future of our cities, and we have made some good inroads. You’ve given us some great examples with the case studies we talk through today, but what is it that really needs to shift for liveability, equity and sustainability to be prioritised, to be the first thing that people think of all the time?

Look, I think we have started to make that shift and as I said before, I think the debate of ‘is climate change real’ has gone. I think we’re now saying it’s real. We’ve got rid of the politicians and the naysayers and now the focus is how do we achieve, how do we get our cities back to net zero? And I think the next challenge is, how do we bring along the community to accept change? How do we accept that higher density is part of what we need to do?

And I think we’ve been – we haven’t been great as architects and planners in bringing the community along. We tend to – you know, the first building that gets put up might – if it’s an eight storey building and that whole area is going to be eight storeys eventually. But the person next door who’s two storeys says, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ I think we need to be not only showing new buildings but showing the vision in a planning sense that just so you know, all of the buildings will eventually be eight storeys and there is mixed height, and we need to then assess new buildings against a future vision that needs to be sold on, this is what we need to do to Australian cities to make them sustainable. And so, that we’re not just sprawling on the outer edges, which is, as we’ve said, highly unsustainable. So, I think it’s about engaging the community.

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us today. Join me in thanking Philip Vivian. To follow the program online you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And visit the 100 Climate Conversations exhibition or join us for a live recording, go to 100climateconversations.com.

This is a significant new project for the museum and the records of these conversations will form a new climate change archive preserved for future generations in the Powerhouse collection of over 500,000 objects that tell the stories of our time. It is particularly important to First Nations peoples to preserve conversations like this, building on the oral histories and traditions of passing down our knowledges, sciences and innovations which we know allowed our Countries to thrive for tens of thousands of years.