Project Details
- Project Name
- Chifley Tower
- Client/Owner
- Kumagai Australia
- Project Types
- Office
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Size
- 1,054,863 sq. feet
- Year Completed
- 1992
- Shared by
- Selin Ashaboglu
- Consultants
- Travis Partners
- Project Status
- Built
Project Description
FROM THE COUNCIL ON TALL BUILDINGS AND URBAN HABITAT (July 9, 2015):
This week, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat announced the winners and finalists of the Performance and Innovation Awards, as part of the 2015 CTBUH Annual Awards. This year’s Performance Award winner goes to Chifley Tower in Australia, and the Innovation Award goes to HOLEDECK.
This week, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat announced the winners and finalists of the Performance and Innovation Awards, as part of the 2015 CTBUH Annual Awards. This year’s Performance Award winner goes to Chifley Tower in Australia, and the Innovation Award goes to HOLEDECK.
The Performance Award recognizes the measured environmental performance of a building or development and the award goes to the building that has the least environment impact on the urban realm using measured data. It is increasingly being recognized that the industry needs to focus on actual “performance” rather than “best intentions.”
Originally completed in 1992, the Chifley Tower’s core infrastructure dated back to 1980s technology, and it was steadily falling behind its competitors in terms of its performance. In 2008, Chifley Tower began an overhaul of its key building systems and services to deliver vastly improved performance, energy efficiency, and reliability. The target of this project was for the building to achieve a 4.5 star NABERS Energy Rating, which it was able to meet. In fact, the project realized a savings of 55% in electricity consumption, and reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 55% as well. Chifley Tower was able to achieve this highly complex project in an occupied commercial property over a prolonged period of time, which is a testament to the high standard of project planning and management.
The Technical Awards Jury applauded the efforts to update the energy efficiency of this aging building, both to keep the building competitive with newer structures, as well as addressing critical issues surrounding climate change. “The outcome of the energy upgrade was successful on several fronts – it reduced energy costs for the building owner and their tenants, it reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and repositioned an older building in a very competitive commercial real estate market,” commented Ashok Raiji, CTBUH Technical Awards Juror and Principal and Mechanical Engineer at Arup. “In a sense, the project gave a ‘new and better life’ to an old asset that was becoming non-competitive in the market place.”
