VCAL

Melbourne Sustainable Architecture Tour and ‘Thank You’

On Tuesday 5 February,  VCAL students went on a sustainability walking tour in the CBD.  While walking around Federation Square, along the Yarra river, through de Graves Street, and beside buildings such as Council House Two, our guide Katie, explained how our city is changing and buildings are been designed to be as sustainable as possible, so that by 2020 the city of Melbourne precinct will be carbon neutral.

To help this happen, architectural and design strategies include: roof top worm farms and bee hives, wind turbines, litter traps, recycling, water harvesting, rain gardens and retro fitting.  An interesting fact is that Federation Square is already a carbon neutral precinct and the goal is for it to become carbon negative by 2020. We also learnt about social sustainability as we walked through Hosier Lane.

 After a quick train ride to Collingwood, we visited the headquarters of ‘Thank You’, a social enterprise that commits 100% of their profits from their range of products to helping put an end to global poverty.  It was inspiring to hear their journey to get to where they are.  Their story started small, with an idea to sell bottled water to help end the world water crisis and grew to raising millions of dollars to get safe water, toilets and child and maternal health programs to thousands of people in need.  

Ms. Casey Mayne

VCAL Co-ordinator