Christie Walk
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- Content rating:
- Case Study
- posted 28 Aug 2008
Built on only 2000m2 (half an acre) it demonstrates all aspects of urban sustainable in a highly compact space. The development was completed in December 2006.
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- Categorised under:
- Feasability, Planning, Design, Construction,
- Greyfield Development,
- Site Ecology, Place Making and Social Sustainability, Estate Design, Materials and Recycling, Water Management, Energy Management,
- Small (<100 lots),
- Medium Density,
- Designer, Builder,
- Temperate,
Location
101 Sturt Street,Adelaide,SA,5000,Australia
Table of contents
Introduction
The dwellings in the development include a linked 3 storey townhouses with full solar orientation, a 3 storey block of six apartments with east-west orientation and a full roof garden, three 2 storey strawbale cottages and a 3 storey strawbale townhouse. A 5 storey apartment building containing 13 apartments with community facilities (meeting room, library, kitchen, toilet and ‘interpretive room’) that serves the whole Christie Walk site is located on the Sturt Street frontage.
The project was designed for a group of clients represented by a development cooperative, Wirranendi Inc., and created by the non-profit educational association, Urban Ecology Australia Inc. The purpose of the cooperative was to create community-based projects that maximise environmental performance and energy efficiency. The cooperative structure provided a means for people to build for themselves in urban environments where single house blocks are rarely available. The clients included first time home buyers, investment purchasers, experienced home owners seeking the advantages of an urban lifestyle and older people wanting to retire in an active, mixed community.
With reduced car park provision and no internal traffic, the site was developed to take advantage of its inner-urban location within easy walking distance of Adelaide’s Central Market and public transport services.
The project is on a T-shaped site the size of two quarter-acre blocks in inner-city Adelaide, South Australia. The site is small, awkwardly shaped and severely constrained, with buildings hard on or close to most of the boundaries. The constraints of the site made it impossible to provide all the buildings with ideal passive solar orientation.
Adelaide’s climate is ‘Mediterranean’ with warm to hot summers and cool winters. It is subject to ‘cool changes’ when temperatures can plummet from the high 30s to low 20s (degrees Celcius) in less than an hour. Although the City of Adelaide rarely experiences freezing temperatures it can feel very cold. Buildings need insulation to keep heat in during cold weather and keep heat out in hot weather.
The land was owned by the Wirranendi development cooperative during construction and individual properties were then sold on a community title. Each purchaser owns their own dwelling but also shares ownership and responsibility for the landscaped community areas that include a productive community garden and roof garden. On completion, the ground floor of the 5 storey apartment building will include a shared kitchen and laundry and small, general purpose hall for parties that won’t fit in small apartments.
House and apartment prices were intended to include all the community areas and facilities that would eventually be provided and have ranged from the low $200,000s to $425,000. The nonprofit structure of the development cooperative and its ‘in-house’ building company played a key role in keeping house prices in a range comparable to conventional inner-city properties in Adelaide.
Christie Walk Firsts
Christie Walk is the first development of its kind in an Australian city. It can lay claim to a number of substantial firsts:
- First Australian example of a fully featured and integrated inner-city eco- housing development.
- First green development in the City of Adelaide.
- First genuine roof garden in South Australia.
- First apartment building in South Australia to receive development approval with integrated photovoltaic panels.
- First housing development in South Australia with more than 5kW of photovoltaic panels.
- First apartment building in South Australia with integrated translucent photovoltaic panels.
- First straw bale houses in an Australian capital city.
- First non-toxic houses in the City of Adelaide.
- First housing development in the City of Adelaide with an integral community produce garden.
- First housing development in the City of Adelaide with underground stormwater tanks.
- First housing development in South Australia to provide solar hot water to all dwellings.
- First housing development in the City of Adelaide to use second-class water for irrigation and toilet flushing.
- First development to demonstrate commitment to a walkable city by obtaining development approval with less than 50% car parking.
- First privately funded housing co-operative to undertake green development.
- First medium-scale inner-city development to be undertaken and managed by community organisations dependent on volunteerism.
- First housing development in South Australia to win an international environmental award. (The APFED Award for Good Practice, Silver Prize.)
- First South Australian finalist in the international BSHF Habitat Awards.
Source: Paul Downton. Ecopolis Now. 2006.7.12
Design background
The brief demanded energy efficiency and high overall ecological performance. User participation in the development process and an ethical investment funding base were also important.
It was intended to demonstrate and trial both the problems and possibilities of ecological,‘community-driven’ development on urban sites. Concerns ranged from broader issues of community participation to the detail of specifying materials to create non-toxic, healthy homes.
The site was purchased cheaply and this helped to keep development costs down, but because the buildings are relatively innovative and possess exceptional levels of insulation, etc., they each cost a little more. An individualised approach to each dwelling design also added costs.
The structure of the first completed building, a straw bale cottage, was built by volunteer labour. This helped reduce ‘start up’ costs in the building program. Most of the construction has been via a conventional building contract with some augmentation by volunteer labour. The timeline for the development was stretched by a series of unforseen circumstances and provided a series of financial challenges for the cooperative.
Water treatment
Chlorine-free sewage treatment was planned. A Coast and Clean Seas grant enabled the provision of a sewage mining system (by Resource Recovery) but its running costs were such that the community corporation decided to retire its use. The Christie Walk community revisited the challenge of on-site treatment of black and greywater and negotiated an innovative onsite treatment system with the support of Adelaide City Council and SA Water, but the water utility withdrew its commitment to the system in late 2007.
Hotwater and fittings
All dwellings have solar hot water with electrical backup. The apartments have a shared system with banked solar panels and a gas-fired boiler backup. Low water use shower heads help control the water supply. Some proprietors have installed under-bench filters that provide drinking water at low flow rates.
Stormwater
Water shed by the roofs, balconies and other impervious surfaces is collected for use on site in two 20,000L underground tanks situated beneath the carports. The water is used for irrigation and toilet flushing, reducing total water importation to the site.
Links
References
Project Details
| Developer |
Wirranendi Inc. |
| Architect |
Paul Downton |
| Builder |
|
| Engineer |
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Comments
1
Angela Bennett 14/01/2009 @ 02:08:55
What water treatment system did they use, on my "block" there is no town water, so I will be relying on rain water and creek water, I want to ensure I don't adversly affect the water catchement/creek......what do you suggest?
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2
Karen Montgomery 02/10/2009 @ 15:50:41
CHRISTIE WALK
'Christie Walk' is an exciting development in that it exemplifies a number of firsts for an inner city urban development in Australia. The main aspect is its efforts towards sustainability.
One outstanding feature is its people friendliness, which is achieved by a walkable neighbouhood with communal gardens; this is supported by its extreme compactness on only half an acre.
Amoung some of the eco features demonstrated here are water and energy reduction achieved by solar energy use for generating hot water, the collection of water with stormwater tanks on site and the use of environmentally friendly and recycled building materials.
The great benefit of 'Christie Walk' is its demonstration that an environmentally type of development can be achieved in an innercity setting; therefore it can set the benchmark for future developments of this kind in the same setting.
It could have gone further if funding had permitted with the recycling of grey water and sewerage on-site. More solar panels could have been instigated for the generation of electricity and therefore reducing the dependence of the community on electricity from the grid.
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3
vesna misevski 16/10/2009 @ 15:49:21
This development is unique in it's own right. Not only does it fulfill elements of sustainable design and construction but it has also undertaken and managed by community organisations dependent on volunteerism. This project is inspiring with it's use of of the straw bail construction. Although this process is used quite significant international its adopting to this development clearly reprsent both a throughough innovative approach during the design and planning stages of the development. Despite the challenges that presented themselves during its construction, this project not only educated the industry of the benefits of it's use but played a key role in developing future ways to improve it's installation. Benfits of using straw bails in not limited to low cost (30 times less energy-intensive than wood-frame walls to manufacture.) but also an excellent alternative to creatiing highly insulated walls which in the long run save occupiers costs on cooling and heating.
http://strawbale.sustainablesources.com/
http://www.strawbale.com.au/
http://glassford.com.au/main/?page_id=462
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Justin Miller 14/10/2009 @ 14:22:55
On the face of it the development is definitely setting a high standard for others to follow regarding the use of sustainable materials and implementation of renewable energy strategies. The case study would however, be more insightful if more information regarding water usage and electrical usage could be given; the fact that the site is the first with a five kW photovoltaic installation has no bearing if we do not have anything to compare it to, if the Pv installation only replaces 5% of the electric demand then its success is dubious, but if it replaces 70 or 80% then it is obviously a great success, unfortunately we have no measure for comparing this or the water strategy. Due to financial constraints it seems sadly, that the ideal synergistic strategy for the development has not yet been achieved. I do appreciate the developments drive towards the use sustainable materials low embodied energy materials. The fact that this site was developed in an urbanised area is proof that sustainability can be implemented anywhere. Congratulations on all the achievements
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Mathews John 10/11/2010 @ 12:51:09
The” Christie Walk” development in Adelaide, Australia seems to be the perfect answer for acquiring affordable homes in these times where there are such constraints to keep the cost as low as possible!! The environment friendly apartments are the perfect answer to cost effective homes where there are so many innovations being done for the first time with even solar hot water which will go a long way to keep down electricity bills!! I am sure that they are really going to be in great demand!!
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Yen Ting Kuo 14/10/2009 @ 15:02:19
The concepts of the Christie Walk includes three major sustainable perspectives which are social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Based on these core concepts, it has achieve high standard of sustainability. The development site location is a critical element that influences the sustainable development. Christie Walk project decides a good public transport hub that ensure the development can be connected with the surrounding development. It can directly reduce the long travel demand. As the most sustainable development, the applications of sustainable technologies such as photovoltaic penal, solar heat can reduce the conventional energy consumption and provide the clean energy recourses. Overall, it can be the excellent example that show how the future sustainable development is.
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