Fresh Centre wins sustainable award

Brisbane Markets’ recently refurbished Fresh Centre building has won the Excellence in Sustainable Building award at the Master Builders Brisbane 2012 Housing & Construction Awards, held on Friday night.

Original Brisbane Markets COD building circa 1964

The $10 million refurbishment of the 48-year-old, three-storey building at the Brisbane Markets was designed by Wiley & Co Pty Ltd, who was acknowledged for its extraordinary work.

The aging 4,500m2 building was partially dilapidated and used as a warehousing and office space until the Wiley & Co team was engaged to bring the building back to life.

In 2007, a feasibility study was undertaken to assess the merits of refurbishing the building. This was followed by design workshops with Brisbane Markets management.

By 2010, Wiley & Co had finalised the design and the refurbishment of the building, once known as the Committee of Direction or Growcom building, began.

Brisbane Markets Limited took possession of the completed office block in late 2011. It features a multi-functional ground floor space, with commercial tenancy offices, open public spaces, cafe, service centre and fully equipped commercial kitchen with training rooms.

The sustainability award has focused on the building’s environmental features including:

• A natural ventilation system which cools the ground floor concourse area naturally, using two large light shafts from the second floor and roof.
• Motorised louvers installed at the tops of the shafts connected to a sensory system that allows the louvers to respond to rain, temperature and fire accordingly.
• Air condition system that is connected to the louvers so it shuts down when they are open, saving power and prolonging the life cycle of the equipment.
• All external windows are replaced with high performance laminated glass to control heat loads and reduce external noise levels.
• New roofing and insulation to boost the buildings’ thermal efficiency and noise reduction.
• The raising of major plant, mechanical equipment, main switchboard and standby generator in preparation for any flood event, as was seen in 1974 and 2011
• 22,000 litre in-ground storage tanks installed to capture roof

  

  Ground floor at the Fresh Centre

  rainwater for toilet flushing and irrigation.  

• Recycling of building materials during the gutting and refurbishment process, with 81% of material removed being recycled (321 tonnes out of 394 tonnes removed). Asbestos products could not be recycled. The building received an asbestos free certificate.           

Brisbane Markets Limited (BML) CEO Andrew Young has praised the collaboration and professionalism of the Wiley & Co Pty Ltd team, who are currently working on the upgrading of Brisbane Markets Commercial Centre site, fronting Sherwood Road.

“We knew from the early days of planning that the building could be revived but there were certainly changes, with stringent new building code standards and our need to make the building multi-functional,” Mr Young said.

“The January 2011 flood added to the challenges but also gave us the ability to consider construction of a second level transformer to raise all our major plant and associated electrical infrastructure.”

Over 40 trees have been planted around the Fresh Centre and an area of new garden has been added.

Mr Young said the brief was to revive an aged, semi-abandoned building into a modern, multi-functional structure, with high quality fit-out.

He said the focus on sustainable building was a bonus that has contributed to BML being a good custodian of the environment and it would save thousands of dollars in energy use in the years ahead.