Beyond the Grid: Australia’s Self-Sufficient City Revolution Gathers Pace

Australia’s cities are haemorrhaging energy. Billions of dollars every year leak out through inefficient buildings, wasted heat, dumped organics and an electricity grid tethered to coal and gas with fossil subsidies to government in the multiple billions of dollars. But a growing coalition of architects, investors, councils and policymakers is investing in a major ambition; to move cities towards producing more energy than they consume. A vehicle pushing the industry towards what is increasingly becoming a commercially viable reality is A New Normal (ANN), an initiative launched at Melbourne Design Week in 2021 by Finding Infinity principal Ross Harding. “ANN sits across three things: strategy, origination, and matchmaking,” Harding says. ANN crunches the numbers of what a self-sufficient city would look like and how much it would cost: Melbourne costs $27,000 per capita, Brisbane comes in at $20,000 and Sydney $22,000 per capita. “We then originate prototype projects with leading architecture firms that demonstrate one piece of that strategy at a time and stand up financially on their own terms,” Harding says. “And we match those projects with private investors and sites so they get built.” ▲ A rendering of the Hassell Studio-designed office Matter House. Four major projects that embody its aims have already been completed. And with the Hassell Studio-designed Matter House project— a “self-powered” Melbourne office building with an anaerobic digester to turn food waste from neighbouring businesses into power—making headway and several more projects in the pipeline, momentum is building. Hassell Studio principal Ingrid Bakker says that the team had been invited by Finding Infinity to consider speculative projects in 2021, a very different time for the development industry. “A New Normal was useful because it gave us space to test ideas without those constraints … and get people thinking about what’s possible next. “The interest in sustainability is definitely still there, it hasn’t gone away. But what has shifted is how easily some of these ideas can be delivered, particularly with tighter budgets and more pressure on feasibility,” Bakker says. Design detail, engineering ambition Not every step towards energy self-sufficiency requires an anaerobic digester, however. Sometimes it starts with terracotta piping. The Matter House project on 28-30 Stephenson Street at Cremorne, which is currently on the market for a tenant, shows how sustainability can be embedded through design detail as much as engineering ambition. “The facade is quite simple in its base form as a straightforward glazed building, but layered with a screen made from terracotta pipes,” Bakker says. “They’re cut into smaller sections and suspended to create a shading layer. The circular form is actually really efficient at reducing solar gain, which is something we’ve continued to explore in other projects as well.” ▲ A rendering of the Cremorne office tower designed by Hassell Studio. That kind of iterative thinking—testing a detail on one project, refining it on the next—is increasingly how Hassell approaches the early stages of any brief. But as with many projects in Victoria and across the country, investment in sustainability comes down to timing, the right tenant and making the numbers work, Bakker says. “The challenge is usually less about willingness, and more about making it stack up commercially. Projects such as Matter House show what’s possible, but they still need to align with market conditions to move forward.” It is a reminder that even the most resolved sustainable project must eventually meet the market—and several projects initially launched under the ANN banner in 2021 have not survived that encounter. But the ones that have are beginning to add up. Proof of concept Some of the most striking proof of concept projects so far might also be the most modest. Delete Images: Eve Wilson Wilam Ngarrang ( pictured above ) a retrofit of a brick walk-up apartment building at Fitzroy completed alongside Kennedy Nolan Architects performs at 33.3kWh per square metre, less than half the residential averages of 80 to 150kWh per square metre. Delete Images: Peter Bennetts At Richmond, the Sanders Place coworking conversion ( pictured above )—delivered with NMBW and Openwork—generates 70 per cent of its own energy from rooftop solar, effectively running on sunlight for most of the week. Delete Images: Peter Bennetts And at Brunswick, the council-owned Balam Balam community facility ( pictured above ) uses 79 per cent less energy than a comparable business-as-usual building—and 42 per cent less than a NABERS 6-star office. Additionally, the retrofit of the Master Builders headquarters, completed in early 2026, meant the Centre for Innovation and Collaboration was fully electrified. Other self-sufficiency projects include a new 31-storey hotel in Adelaide which will be the world’s tallest hotel development built out of cross-laminated timber when completed. Self-sufficient takeover Harding has been working to expand ANN into new markets, targeting the five main Australian capitals, all of which have distinct grids, climates, fleets and gas mixes. Adelaide is already past 70 per cent renewables, Harding says, while Brisbane has the highest rooftop solar uptake in the country. Elsewhere, Perth holds the hardest energy problem on the continent—industrial gas. “No other comparable economy has this combination of conditions and a private-capital-led model already in motion,” Harding says. But policy remains a considerable hurdle. “To scale this from prototypes to entire cities, the policy backlog has to clear,” Harding says. ▲ Inside the Sanders Place coworking development. Image: Peter Bennetts. “Australia has been slow to mandate the things every other comparable economy is already mandating—building electrification, retrofit standards, performance disclosure, organic waste bans, gas phase-outs. Waiting for policy means waiting indefinitely. “But architecture can unlock this policy. A finished, profitable building is a piece of evidence that policymakers, investors and the public can stand inside. It moves the conversation from theory to proof. “The next steps are to scale our project pipelines in all five capitals, continue to match investors and sites city-by-city and open up ANN for a wider range of projects to submit and get involved.” ▲ Inside Sanders Place at 11-15 Albert Street, Richmond. While becoming a self-sustaining city by 2030 may be an ambitious target, even for Melbourne, initiatives such as A New Normal are driving sustainability in practice. “Given the current economic climate, it’s probably unlikely we’ll see that level of shift happen in that timeframe,” Bakker says. “But that doesn’t mean the idea isn’t valuable. It’s already influencing how people think about local production, circular systems, and how buildings can give back rather than just take.” Bakker says often the industry is increasingly receptive, and the main hurdle is visibility. “Once those options are on the table, it becomes a much easier decision. It’s less about doing something differently for the sake of it, and more about making smarter use of what’s already there,” Bakker says.

Beyond the Grid: Australia’s Self-Sufficient City Revolution Gathers Pace

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