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Commitment to Sustainabilty

Our commitment to practical sustainability dates to 1977, when Managing Director, David Week founded the not-for-profit CBBP to develop a culturally sustainable architecture for Papua New Guinea. The CBBP went on to design and build many successful projects. In his Ideas for the New Millennium, Peter Ellyard wrote of the principles David developed in this work as a paradigm for 'social and cultural sustainability'. Brenda and Robert Vale, in Green Architecture: Design for a Sustainable Future, said of these principles that they 'could be taken as a model for this goal…of a sustainable architecture.' Today, we implement sustainability principles into all our projects. Recent special initiatives include:

  • Development of a set of culture driven design patterns for the Australian Conservation Foundation's new offices in the 60L building in Melbourne. [Sep 2001]

  • Presentation on sustainability at the Royal Australian Institute of Architects National Housing Conference in Adelaide. [Nov 2001]

  • Representative of the Private Sector Contractors Group [PSCG] to organise a Sustainable Development forum, in conjunction with ACFOA and AusAID. [Feb 2002]

Work with not-for-profits

We have a 24-year heritage of working with the not-for-profit sector. Dating from the period 1977-1985, when CEO, David Week co-founded and then managed the Community-Based Building Program, a not-for-profit design-build organisation dedicated to learning from and developing the traditional architecture of PNG, through practical activity in building projects.

Our interest and commitment to the not-for-profit sector continues to this day.

  • In 2000, we worked with World Vision and IDSS (Oxfam Australia's consulting arm) on the design of a major AusAID project in central Vietnam.

  • Also in 2000, in East Timor, we worked closely with UNICEF on school reconstruction. They did the roofs (on 650 schools); in our role as the Construction Management Unit of the TFET-funded Emergency School Reconstruction Program, we did the rest.

  • In 2001, we are designing WWF's offices in Wewak, PNG.

  • Also in 2001, we are working with ACFOA - the peak body for NGOs - on a conference on sustainability in aid, to be held in November.