The drive towards greater sustainability across the architecture and construction industries is increasingly becoming codified in legislation, guidelines, and the National Construction Code. It’s important to note that, for the most part, businesses have taken up the challenge unilaterally; pursuing better sustainable outcomes because they make business and environmental sense, not just out of fear of reprimand.
While sustainability is undoubtedly a central focus across the architecture and construction industries these days, it wasn’t always so. Even as recently as a few years ago, many businesses were struggling to find the balance between the ideological (and practical) need to be more environmentally conscious, and the costs of doing so.
All architects, designers, and specifiers are familiar with the National Construction Code, or NCC. Updated at regularity, the NCC is a performance-based code of construction practices and requirements, to ensure buildings safely and sustainably perform exactly as intended to best serve both their current and also future communities.
It’s fair to say that many architects and designers view themselves as the creators of humanity’s future, driven by a sense of great responsibility to those living now and also the legacy their creations leave.