DESIGN AWARD WIN FOR SUSTAINABLE DUNNIES

Envirotecture – and our building designer Tracy Graham in particular – picked up a BDA NSW Design Award last Friday evening, for a growing fleet of public facilities across Fairfield City Council’s jurisdiction. These ‘sustainable dunnies’ as we like to call them, are a new take on an old need. They provide clean, safe and attractive public toilets in parks and shopping centres in Fairfield and surrounding suburbs, replacing the ubiquitous ageing brick toilet blocks which are dark, often unsafe, and uninviting.

The new facilities are architecturally refreshing, low maintenance, and sustainable for a number of reasons. They look after their own water demand, harvesting roofwater for toilet flushing, and where tree cover permits, harvest solar energy for lighting and pumping. They are use precast concrete wall panels made from 95% recycled concrete (even the mix water is recycled), created in a joint venture between Fairfield Council’s Sustainable Resource Centre and Metromix Smithfield. The roof structure uses lightweight foam sandwich steel panels, which have flat top and bottom surfaces, enabling easy cleaning below, and a thin-film photovoltaic panel to be adhered on top.

The flushing mechanism is electronic, ensuring perfect flushing volumes without the need for a cistern, thus reducing vandalism repairs. Each facility has a male and female, and one lockable accessible toilet. The male and female cubicles are only large enough for one person, with outward opening doors, thus dramatically improving personal safety, especially after dark. Privacy has been provided by obscured metal screens.

Some Dutch politician may have declared multiculturalism dead, but he has never been to Fairfield! There are 159 identifiable cultural groups happily coexisting within the Fairfield LGA, and many have particular sensitivities around personal hygiene activities, all of which had to be considered in the design.

The design team at Envirotecture, coordinated by Tracy Graham, also included the structural engineer Damian Ienco at NB Consulting Engineers, and all details of the design are incorporated into one set of working drawings. The construction is undertaken by Fairfield’s own building team, under the overall direction of Mick Raby, Manager City Works, and on-site direction of Frank Meola. Frank produces the precast panels in house, as well as carrying out all site works with his Delta Team of council tradies.