Ice Box Challenge Martin Place Sydney -
Passive House Australia
Public Installation Martin Place Sydney
The Ice Box Challenge is an interactive public installation, that demonstrates the advantages of Passivhaus world-wide. The challenge involves 2 identically designed structures. One built to the typical building standards in Australia the other to the Passivhaus Standard. Each structure houses 1cm3 of ice. The Challenge involves measuring the amount of ice left after a certain length of time.
GAEA Architects was invited to provide a design for this Challenge along with Eclipse Passive House prefabricated builders.
Our design philosophy for these structures included the following:
We felt it was important create a little structure that was uniquely Australian.
We considered what it means to be Australian in both a historical and an environmental context. We felt inspired by:
● The inherent wisdom of the Australian First Nations People
● New Australians and temporary structures (e.g., tents of gold rush/ war time/ depression/ immigration).
● Modern day simple tents to allow connection with nature – bush or beach.
● Early vernacular Architecture – the simple, cheap corrugated iron clad tin shed.
● Our Climate of extremes.
A building ideally has the following functions:
● Provision of shelter/ protection from harsh weather elements.
● Thermal comfort.
● To touch the earth lightly by considering:
o The construction method:
▪ Minimise:
● Excavation
● Material usage and waste with prefabricated construction
▪ Reuse structure and materials by allowing for reassembly and recycling
o Natural materials:
▪ No ‘off gassing’ of VOC and other chemicals
▪ To allow environmental decomposition back to the earth
▪ For psychological benefits
● To reference and incorporate nature to promote well-being
● To infuse the structure with the positive free flowing energy (e.g., sacred geometry)
The Ice Box Challenge enables us to clearly see the how Passivhaus may outperform (in the functions listed above) to that of a ‘standard’ building in Australia.
