Project Manager CH2 Building for the City of Melbourne
COUNCIL HOUSE 2 (CH2) Building
Demonstrating world leadership in ecologically sustainable design.
Matt first learnt about CH2 while tutoring architecture students on green building at the University of Melbourne in 2002. The City of Melbourne had approached the university to canvas the opinion of young, fresh designers.
The following year the role of project manager CH2 was advertised in the paper and he applied. He had been renovating his Victorian terrace home at this time and had incorporated numerous green building elements (inspired by Michael Mobbs’ home in Chippendale, Sydney
https://www.realestate.com.au/lifestyle/off-grid-house-costs-300-year/
His case was that ‘he put my money where my mouth is when it comes to green building’ and that ‘he’d challenged (broken) a few regulations along the way’.
Matt worked closely (once again )with David Pitchford now CEO of City of Melbourne , Professor Rob Adams (cities expert), Mick Pearce (celebrated eco-architect & bio-mimic) and Che Wall (who later won the Banksia Award for services to the environment).
Managing CH2 would change his life forever. Not only would he be developing ground-breaking systems, he would understand scale-ability and their application in precinct and cities. Eco-cities was to be the next aspiration but where were they building cities? He know about Dongtan in China (championed by Peter Head at Arup) but he’d also heard about the scale of projects in Dubai. Greening the dessert (the global hydrocarbon epicentre) was going to be a challenge, however CH2 had reinforced Matt’s journey along the tortuous path (as Kate Kennedy had warned); the path of greatest resistance…