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BritomartSustainability Report

2020

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4. Letter from the CEO Cooper and Company’s chief executive, Matthew Cockram, on a year of sustainability initiatives.

6. Our goals Britomart’s sustainability goals for the year ahead.

8. Mark SinclairSustainability Director Mark Sinclair on Britomart’s path to its first Green Star Performance Tool rating.

12. Amanda BryanThe Jacobs consultant provides some context on Britomart’s Green Star Performance Tool Rating.

14. Building performance Tracking electricity, gas and water usage as well as waste production in our buildings.

18. Campbell Williamson Britomart’s development director on the construction of The Hotel Britomart, New Zealand’s first 5 Green Star Hotel.

Photography by David St George

Contents22. Rachel Brown The founder of the Sustainable Business Network on the opportunities the COVID-19 crisis offers.

26. Caleb ScottThe plantsman from The Landing on Britomart’s tree giveaway last Christmas.

32. Rewi SpraggonThe hāngi master on the success of Britomart’s Matariki celebrations.

38. Chris Holmes and Anna TongTwo architects on their Britomart installation for Park(ing) Day.

42. Jonathan KayThe Wellington artist brought a climate-change themed work to Takutai Square.

46. Angela ArrowsmithBritomart’s lead gardener on keeping the precinct green.

50. Green initiativesNew initiatives to make Britomart greener.

52. Sustainability surveyBritomart’s annual snapshot of attitudes within the community.

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Britomart’s parent, Cooper and Company, has always made decisions from a long-term perspective.

SUSTAINABILITY OBJECTIVES LETTER FROM THE CEO

Britomart is an authentic and living expression of our values of long-term ownership, stewardship, community-building and economic prosperity.

We carefully build places, allowing them to find their own cadence of development, working with what is there, nurturing and evolving, not forcing.

We believe a focus on good environmental, social and economic outcomes are each self-validating and build and support each other.

Our endeavours have been guided by a sustainability framework that we find creates outcomes that are much greater than a short-term monetary benefit. But it wasn’t until two years ago that we formalised our commitment to sustainability in a measurable way by becoming the first commercial property company in the country to sign up to the New Zealand Green Building Council’s Green Star Performance Tool.

It’s easy to say you’re being sustainable. It’s another thing to be able to check this assertion against industry-wide benchmarks. The attraction of the Green Star Performance Tool is that it provides a solid basis from which we can assess the sustainability initiatives we have put in place in our nine-block precinct and set robust future targets for ourselves.

Using the tool required us to get our own house in order, so to speak. We created a digital dashboard that gathers real-time data on the use of water, gas and electricity from all the buildings in the Britomart precinct. (We rely on contractors to measure the rubbish that is taken away from Britomart each day, and have discovered that this is an area in which we need to do more work to generate high-quality real-time data). There’s a stark clarity to the figures presented by the dashboard, but this clarity allows us to react quickly to minimise consumption spikes and to see, over short and longer periods, whether our efforts are delivering results.

We’ve now completed our first assessment under the Green Star Performance Tool. The assessment not only required the data from our dashboard, but from a myriad of other aspects of our operations in Britomart, including our determination to support our environmental performance objectives with social sustainability initiatives that engage as wide an audience as possible in our efforts.

The assessment was a long process that required much greater investment of time and energy than we had anticipated. After all this, there was some initial disappointment at our 3-star rating for Britomart as a whole (the highest possible rating is 6 stars). That disappointment was alleviated when Amanda Bryan of Jacobs, who assisted us in our assessment, was able to provide helpful context (you can read more of Amanda’s feedback on p.12). It turns out that 3 stars is a very encouraging result for a first attempt. Now that we are more familiar with the rigours of the reporting process, we are developing plans to improve our rating over time.

We aren’t the only ones working on this. The New Zealand Green Building Council has been responsive to our feedback and is working to modify what is essentially an Australian tool to better suit the conditions in this country. We hope these improvements will make it easier for more organisations to begin using the tool.

This time next year, The Hotel Britomart will be part of our Green Star Performance reporting across the precinct. The hotel is currently under construction and set to open later this year, and will be New Zealand’s first 5 Green Star hotel. This process has offered its logistical challenges, as our development director Campbell Williamson details on p.18. There are still gaps in construction processes that make reporting to Green Star standards challenging: we were unable, for example, to find a satisfactory way to measure some types of construction waste going to landfill. As we learn these things, we are able to share information, in the hope that this will lead to changes in the industry that make rigorous reporting the norm.

As The Hotel Britomart nears completion we have been heartened that our own research (which you can see on p.52) reveals that it is increasingly common for people to factor environmental criteria into their spending decisions. The same logic is applying more and more to businesses leasing office space, and to any number of other commercial decisions that might be taking place at any time. That means sustainability is rapidly becoming an essential part of any business operation. The faster that happens, the faster we’ll see better environmental outcomes – which, as we all know, will benefit all of us in the long-term.

Ngā mihi,

MATTHEW COCKRAM

CHIEF EXECUTIVE, COOPER AND COMPANY

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HOW GREEN STAR PERFORMANCE (GSP) TOOL POINTS ARE ALLOCATED

CREDIT NAME CRITERIAMAXIMUM POINTS AVAILABLE

Management Measurement of formalised management style, protocol and systems

17 points

Indoor Environment Quality

Measurements and effects on building occupants and their wellbeing

18 points

Energy Measurement of energy / gas consumption, covered by obtaining a NABERSNZ rating

24 points

Transport Modes of transport including a customer survey

7 points

Water Measurement of water consumption 12 points

Materials Procurement and purchasing framework 10 points

Land use and Ecology Operational biodiversity and landscapes 6 points

Emissions Pollutants and control 6 points

Innovation Recognise pioneering initiatives in sustainable design, process and advocacy

10 points

OUR TARGETS FOR 2020

02. Sustainable Development: All new development will seek the appropriate Green Star ratings for design and ‘as built’, with a minimum 5-Star rating a standing objective.

STATUS: ONGOING

The Hotel Britomart, to be completed in late 2020, has achieved 5 Green Star Design certification. Once complete, it will seek 5 Green Star Build certification, and be managed using the Green Star Performance Tool. For more information, read the interview with Campbell Williamson later in this report.

03. Improve monitoring of our waste streams with the goal of reducing waste to landfill.

STATUS: IN PROGRESS

Our tracking of waste data is reliant on the supply of information from contractors who pick up waste from Britomart, which creates delays that diminish our ability to respond

and learn as quickly as we do from data we gather relating to electricity, gas and water usage. Our intention is to build up the ability to collect this data in-house in real time. Better information will allow us to develop better strategies to reduce waste to landfill. Our month-by-month waste data is illustrated later in this report.

04. Write up the Social and Economic elements of our sustainability story and establish baselines through discussion and surveys.

STATUS: IN PROGRESS

The social elements of our sustainability story are detailed separately later in this report. In economic terms, we have kept detailed analysis of our spend on utilities and the impact that adopting the Green Star Performance Tool has had. We also conduct an annual survey of our tenants and have detailed these findings later in this report. Details of some of our social sustainability initiatives are also available later in this report.

01. Achieve a Green Star Performance Tool rating

STATUS: ACHIEVED (3 STARS) AND ONGOING

The Green Star Performance Tool (GSPT) is managed by the New Zealand Green Building Council and was brought into New Zealand from Australia in November 2017. Britomart Group is New Zealand’s first property company to adopt the Tool as part of a three-year commitment. The first performance year ended in March 2019, but a protracted and sometimes challenging assessment process means Britomart’s 3 Green Star rating wasn’t awarded until April 2020. The New Zealand Green Building Council has been accepting feedback to better fit the tool to a New Zealand context.

The Green Star Performance Tool has been combined with normal sustainability practices across the group. Britomart also participates in the NABERSNZ star rating system, which measures the energy and gas performance of buildings over 2000 square metres over a 12-month period. NABERSNZ ratings are used as part of the energy assessments on Green Star Performance. The NZ Green Building Council issues the NABERSNZ certification under license from the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority.

The Green Star Performance Tool has nine key components. In the absence of New Zealand benchmarks, the tool currently measures results against Australian benchmarks. The process requires the appointment of a third-party assessor at the end of each performance year who is required to review our documentation and is able to assess Britomart’s performance during this period.

05. Tenant and User engagement: Build partnerships with tenants active in this area and show the way for those who are not.

We are fortunate in that two of our biggest tenants, Westpac and EY, are rigorous and determined in their approach to sustainability. In 2019 we worked with EY on a display of art by Manurewa High School students, with whom EY have been working for some years. We plan to repeat this exercise in 2020.

In the past year, we have worked with Britomart’s food and beverage tenants to introduce Again Again, a reusable coffee cup scheme across the precinct that offers a waste-free alternative to disposable coffee cups.

We work with the Auckland Food Truck Collective on Food Truck Fridays in Takutai Square. These events – all the operators use compostable packaging – bring our tenants and visitors together in Takutai Square to eat together and listen to music, promoting a sense of community.

One of the objectives of creating this, our second sustainability report, is creating goals against which we can hold ourselves accountable.

These are the sustainability goals we set ourselves for 2020, with commentary on how we’re tracking to meet them.

WHAT GREEN STAR PERFORMANCE RATINGS MEAN

With Green Star Performance, a building or portfolio of buildings can achieve anything from a 0 through to a 6-star rating.

0Star

1Star

2Star

3Star

4Star

5Star

6Star

Assessed Minimum Practice

Average Practice

Good Practice

Best Practice

NZ Excellence

World Leadership

PERFORMANCE

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MELINDA WILLIAMS: Britomart was the first property company in New Zealand to implement the Green Star Performance Tool (GSPT). How many companies in New Zealand are currently using the GSPT now?MARK SINCLAIR: Auckland Council trialled part of the tool a couple of years ago, and that’s the only one I’m aware of at this point in time. The words ‘guinea pig’ have been used on several occasions!

Where is Britomart now in its GSPT journey?We are committed to a three-year programme, and we’ve nearly completed Year Two. It was reasonably challenging to compile our data, which we already had, but in a way that suits the Performance Tool. It’s reasonably prescriptive in the way that we needed to present evidence back to the GSPT auditors, who are employed by the NZGBC.

We’ve received the results of the first year’s assessment (Year One), and Britomart achieved an overall portfolio rating of three stars. This is really great news, as it’s the

GREEN STAR PERFORMANCE

highest Green Star Performance rating with the largest portfolios (nine buildings) in New Zealand. The assessors specifically mentioned that it is unusual (in a good way) to target a GSPT rating for such a diverse portfolio, “with so much effort and commitment”.

What do the star ratings mean?So, you achieve a rating from zero to six, with six being aspirational. Three stars equates to “Good Practice”. Britomart achieving three stars for our first attempt has been a satisfying outcome and provides for a solid platform for us to continually improve and reach higher star ratings for Britomart’s buildings. Is the rating reviewed every year?Yes, it’s a continuous improvement model, similar to the NABERS-NZ system, which measures use of electricity, gas and if you have a diesel generator, you have to account for the diesel being burned. Once you’ve set your mark in the ground, you’re expected to improve.

We also drew a couple of other lines in the sand where we set ourselves fairly good targets

Britomart sustainability vision, implement the business’s Environment Management Plan and report on the achievements. I report directly to Britomart’s CEO and the Britomart Board on all matters sustainable. We carefully assessed the market for an external consultant to assist us with the third-party independent requirements and assessments and chose Jacobs NZ to help us with our GSPT submissions.

Looking back over the year, what’s been your biggest win?The gathering of data. We’ve always had a sustainability programme in place, albeit not formalised. The GSPT has helped us formalise our structure and our electronic files and information in a very precise way to log our data in one place for everyone. Secondly, the most challenging but most rewarding has been the establishment of our Britomart Dashboard, where we gather data points from various places and at a glance we can see from monthly to sometimes half-hourly utility tracking, such as electricity, water, waste management, gas and so on.

Britomart’s Sustainability Director MARK SINCLAIR has been focused on the measurement of the environmental performance of Britomart’s buildings for the precinct’s first rating under the Green Star Performance Tool.

It’s been almost two years since Britomart Group became the first property company in New Zealand to sign up to the New Zealand Green Building Council’s (NZGBC) Green Star Performance Tool, which measures the environmental performance of buildings in the precinct. The results are now in, so how did we do?

of 10 percent reductions in waste to ground, electricity consumed in common areas, gas consumed for heating water and water conservation. We’re tracking reasonably well in most of those categories.

Our programme involves pretty much every department within the Britomart Group. In that respect, it’s been rewarding for people who don’t normally work together and collaborate with the aim to achieving our common goal.

You manage Britomart’s Green Star Performance Tool as an in-house sustainability practitioner. What has it meant for the way you are able to work with the GSPT and what advantages does it bring to Britomart? It was more economical to have an in-house person to operate this part of the business. We believe it’s important that the in-house sustainable professional is able to understand the technical elements of operating commercial buildings and has a good understanding of how the whole business operates. I’m responsible for the collaboration between the various departments to share the

Does this put Britomart at the forefront of this kind of monitoring in New Zealand?I think we are. We’ve been speaking to a number of large commercial operators and also some of our technical and engineering consultancies over the last couple of years through our involvement with the GSPT. I think it’s very leading-edge for the commercial office retail sectors. Some hospitals are very advanced for tracking their utilities in this way, but for the commercial sector, I think we’re at the sharp end.

Has using the GSPT supplied Britomart with data that you’re able to pass on to the precinct’s tenants in a way that’s been useful for them?We’ve developed our own communications that we deliver to our tenant partners at Britomart. The data tool itself is quite prescriptive and wordy – I think there are over 300 pages of documentation that is broken down into 10 categories. We’re applying our environmental approach to those categories. Our first annual Sustainability Report had a number of graphs pertaining

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to different buildings, which provides a high level of detail, and the feedback has been very positive. I think perhaps the only thing that was overlooked last year was CO2 emissions against which some companies report to their boards. So this time round, we’ve added that.

What have been some of the key challenges in implementing the tool?As I’ve mentioned, the tool is very prescriptive, so there is a certain way things have to be done. Generally Britomart is a small, agile and adaptable operation so it’s been a learning curve to follow set rules. One aspect that’s a bit disappointing is the area of waste. We have made a terrific improvement in reducing waste to landfill and recycling materials to the right places yet we get zero points because we haven’t achieved 65 percent savings. It’s not a sliding scale at all. We’ve now discussed with NZGBC that a sliding scale be amended to this category in recognition for the efforts made to divert waste from landfill and encourage more recycling.

A 65 percent reduction does seem like a very high target.It’s certainly a very high point to achieve from the get-go. Ironically, we weren’t far away – it was about a 59 percent reduction.

So you say you’ve proposed changes – does the New Zealand Green Building Council take business feedback on board?This GSPT journey has been a learning

exercise for all parties involved, given Britomart is the first New Zealand business to fully commit to all elements of the tool across multiple buildings. We’ve been working closely with the NZGBC, our consultants Jacobs and our own internal sustainable management team to test the tool in a practical sense and we’ve made recommendations to change some aspects to better suit the New Zealand property market. The NZGBC has accepted our suggestions and we understand these amendments will feature in NZGBC’s next updated GSPT.

So it’s quite a reciprocal working relationship for you.It has been. I think we’re working to round it out and make it work for, hopefully, other New Zealand companies that decide to adopt the tool.

In terms of the New Zealand government’s goal of being carbon neutral by 2050, does using the Green Star Performance Tool give businesses a formal plan to achieve that?We’re at the starting point where lots of individuals and companies are waking up to the fact that we need to do something in terms of the environment. I’m not saying that the GSPT is the only answer, but it’s certainly part of the journey, and helped us refocus our thinking. We were already doing sustainable work anyway, but it has framed where we are going. We are all in this together and if we can reduce our environmental footprint, that’s a good thing.

“I’m not saying that the Green Star Performance Tool is the only answer, but it’s certainly part of the journey, and helped us refocus our thinking ... it has framed where we’re going. We are all in this together and if we can reduce our environmental footprint, that’s a good thing.”

GREEN STAR PERFORMANCE

Takutai Square, just outside the Tiffany & Co store in the refurbished Australis Nathan Buildings. The rocks at right

are part of ‘Pipi Beds’, a 2003 sculpture by Chaz

Doherty, Renata Blair and Bernard Makoare, a reference to the shellfish beds that were present on the foreshore prior

to reclamation.

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MELINDA WILLIAMS: Amanda, what’s your role with Jacobs Consultancy?AMANDA BRYAN: As Principal Sustainability Consultant for Jacobs, my role is based across Australia and New Zealand. Essentially I focus on delivering sustainable outcomes and bring systemic and strategic thinking to how we do that.

And how have you been helping Britomart on its Green Star Performance Tool journey?Jacobs have been engaged by Britomart to provide support and guidance. We review documentation and provide guidance in and around the Green Star submission requirements. With Britomart being the first company in New Zealand to adopt the Green Star Performance Tool, we’re also reviewing Britomart’s submission and connecting the delivery across to the New Zealand Green Building Council. The other thing we’ve done is completed a few credits on Britomart’s behalf, and written technical queries (TQ). A TQ is written to clarify the technical manual guidance when your project doesn’t quite fit into the technical manual requirements. It is a process in which you query the NZGBC to accept the differences.

And Britomart, as the first company to adopt the tool in a holistic way, is something of a test case, right?They call it piloting. Britomart is one of the first Green Star Performance ratings in New Zealand. There are other companies using the GSPT as a review tool at the moment, but Britomart has been really testing it and putting a bit of rigour around its viability in the New Zealand industry, which is good. They’re getting it verified to say, “We’re actually doing it, and here’s the confirmation.”

Britomart has been awarded three stars out of a possible six for its first Green Start Performance rating. What does that mean?To get an outcome of three stars is really amazing, and it’s an extraordinary effort for a first GSPT rating. I can understand that people might perceive it as an ‘average’ rating as the scale goes up to six stars, but it’s not. The tool has not been well-used and adapted to the New Zealand market yet. What Britomart Group are doing is really challenging the tool at the moment. When the Green Building Council Australia (GBCA) Green Star Performance Tool first came out

The work Mark Sinclair [Director of Sustainability at Britomart] is doing right now is challenging what the tool’s status is and its applicability to the New Zealand market. When he goes back to the NZGBC on a point, they consider it and the outcome of challenging this may result in the tool being updated. Britomart is actually pushing the benchmark and challenging the boundaries.  Do you have a specific example of that? This tool originated from the Green Building Council of Australia for the Australian market. With Britomart challenging the tool, it enables better alignment with the New Zealand market. Throughout the submission process, several credits have been challenged, ranging from understanding the technical manual rules and application to the New Zealand market through to how you may achieve a point. For example, the way the technical manual was written around the ecological credits implied that buildings needed a green roof to achieve the point. However through discussions and demonstrating Britomart has extensive exterior landscaping that relates to the buildings that the points are being targeted for, the technical manual rulings have been updated to reflect the outcome of this discussion.

Implementing the GSPT can be challenging for a business to take on. What’s the key benefit for businesses in being audited and published?From a consulting perspective, one of the challenges we have is education around the tool and the value of it and how that value applies to the industry. It is hard when [a tool like this] first comes out. But to me, the verification process demonstrates that you’re walking the talk and your business is serious about sustainability. By getting the GSPT verified, Britomart is demonstrating that they’re walking the talk and taking sustainability seriously, and that they’re collaborating with the NZGBC to improve the standards here.

Has Britomart been doing anything else notable as part of this journey? Mark has done some really good work around his metering system [for gas, electricity and water use and waste production in Britomart’s buildings] and getting it online on the dashboard and getting the visibility around that. That’s a really innovative thing to do in the New Zealand industry, The transparency and level of detail Mark is going into is definitely not typical practice.

Britomart’s Green Star journey advisor AMANDA BRYAN lead Britomart through the process of its first assessment under the Green Star Performance Tool.

It wasn’t an easy process: as the first property company in New Zealand to operate a suite of buildings under the Green Star Performance Tool, Britomart had a lot of learning to do. As principal sustainability consultant for Jacobs New Zealand, Amanda Bryan walked our teams through their first assessment. Here, she talks us through the journey and explains some of the context for the rating.

to market and the industry went through a similar process, clients and companies I worked with were only getting zeros or one stars. Three is actually really amazing because it’s a new tool to industry. Britomart is finessing their already-good practices in accordance with what the New Zealand Green Building Council want to see. They’re really close to being better than a three-star too. The performance is likely to go up quickly as Britomart gets more documentation in order over the years. But three stars at a first pass with no existing frameworks in industry is actually a really great outcome.

The Green Star Performance Tool is a progressive tool – what does that mean? The NZGBC are looking at releasing a revision of the GSPT and when they do that, the goalposts might change. When they release a revision, they do review some of the compliance and performance requirements that you’re measured against. But I don’t think that will change much for Britomart.

So Britomart’s feedback about how the tool works in the New Zealand market is useful for the New Zealand Green Building Council?

“By getting the Green Star Performance Tool verified, Britomart is demonstrating that they’re walking the talk and taking sustainability seriously, and that they’re collaborating with the NZ Green Building Council to improve the standards here.”

GREEN STAR PERFORMANCE

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You can’t have a Green Star Performance rating without measuring everything obsessively − that’s why we track the use of electricity, water and gas throughout the precinct, as well as the amount of waste sent to recycling and landfill. These graphs track our year-on-year data, and whether we’re meeting our reduction targets. First, here are our Water usage and Waste creation graphs.

GREEN STAR PERFORMANCE U

sag

e (K

L)

Month

WATER USAGE

*In the graph above, the drop in water use in February is the result of a processing error which we are working to rectify. In calculating our overall usage for this year, we substituted figures from last year rather than use the 2020 data for February and March on this graph.

We measure water usage across all our buildings, including water used by all offices, shops and food and beverage outlets, as well as in shared spaces such as foyers. We targeted (somewhat arbitrarily) a 10 percent reduction in water across the precinct use and achieved 7.2 percent. Closer monitoring helped identify high-use areas and for management plans to be quickly developed to lower water use in these areas.

Mon

th

WASTE VOLUME

This graph measures waste from every building in Britomart, so it includes waste generated by Britomart businesses. We were disappointed not to achieve greater savings. We have concerns about the rigour and timeliness of the way our waste outputs are measured by contractors, so we are working to develop internal systems to capture detailed waste data rather than relying on volumes issued to us monthly from external providers. This will enable us to be more reactive and better understand our waste streams. There is, however, encouraging news from our waste data. There is a greater proportion of recycling occurring, which translates to less waste to landfill. Similarly, the amount of food compost is growing, the result of better separation of materials at waste collection points.

Volume (KL)

WASTE VOLUME

2019 2020

0.5%SAVED

(KILO LITRES)

WATER USAGE

2019 2020

7.2%SAVED

(KILO LITRES)

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GREEN STAR PERFORMANCEU

sag

e (k

Wh

)

Month

ELECTRICITY USAGE

This graph covers electricity use in shared spaces in Britomart, not individual tenancies. While we made savings in this area, we didn’t reach the 10 percent target we had set ourselves. A continuous fine-tuning process yielded strong savings in some Britomart buildings, but in others, we discovered a need to fine-tune our internal processes so that we are able to be more responsive to daily variations in electricity use.

Our electricity and gas usage graphs show large savings in gas consumption and only a minor reduction in electricity use. One of next year’s targets is to improve electricity savings.

Month

GAS USAGE

We use gas for the central heating in our buildings. We also use it to heat water for hot water supply in some of our properties. This graph measures gas use across the shared spaces in our buildings, but not what is used in individual tenancies. Closer monitoring allowed us to manage equipment and supply in a responsive manner to achieve substantial savings in gas use.

GAS USAGE

2019 2020

38.5%SAVED

(kWh)

ELECTRICITY USAGE

2019 2020

3.5%SAVED

(kWh)

CO2 MEASURED IN TONNES: (THE LESS CO2 THE BETTER)

ELECTRICITY 2019: 340.78 Tonnes 2020: 328.97 Tonnes

NATURAL GAS: 2019: 85.57 Tonnes 2020: 52.59 Tonnes

Usa

ge

(kW

h)

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MELINDA WILLIAMS: According to the certificate on your wall, The Hotel Britomart has officially been awarded a 5 Green Star Design rating.

CAMPBELL WILLIAMSON: Yes, it has. It was a nice accolade because we’re the first New Zealand hotel to get a Green Star rating. That’s a pat on the back for everyone, including the New Zealand Green Building Council, because being the first one, there was a lot of working through the interpretation of the documentation for the first time and how it all worked.

What did it take to achieve the 5 Green Star Design rating?A lot of it is business as usual for Britomart. We’ve spent maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars more, in terms of direct cost, than what might otherwise have been the case, to get us to the 5 Star Green Star rating. The key elements are concrete mixes, glass, insulation, reducing plastics in the building, furniture, timbers and veneers, stains, landscaping and wellness within the building such as volume of fresh air, carbon dioxide levels and so on.

Could you explain one or two of those elements in detail to give a clearer idea of what’s involved?

Britomart development director CAMPBELL WILLIAMSON has been overseeing progress on The Hotel Britomart which, when it opens later in 2020, will be New Zealand’s first 5 Green Star hotel.

The Hotel Britomart not only involves the construction of a brand-new, brick-clad tower, but the refurbishment of two adjacent heritage buildings and the creation of a new public laneway. Here, Campbell Williamson talks about how the Green Star certification process has influenced every aspect of the design and build of this unique structure.

THE HOTEL BRITOMART

Sure. In concrete, for example, a big factor is in how far the trucks have to travel to get to us. You might be able to get sustainable concrete, mixed and at the best price, but if it comes from the Waikato, 100km away, it’s not going to work. You have to get a supplier closer to the site.

What’s been the biggest challenge of building to Green Star standards?For us, the big cost is in following through all the documentation and ensuring that it’s right, and not just taking it as read when someone says, “Yeah, it’s all right”. Everything needs to be checked and double-checked and checked again. And it’s important that we get the terminology right because the certifications and labelling are not yet day-to-day business in New Zealand’s construction industry – there are highly technical specifications and nuances that can trip us up.

It’s not so much the direct cost, it’s the management and the research requirements that have been the most challenging. There are products that the industry understands well and that everyone has become used to using without any question that they satisfy the building codes and that they are compatible with all the other components of the building process. But if a new product is substituted in because the usual product is

Right The Hotel Britomart, under construction on the corner of Galway and Gore Streets, will be New Zealand’s first 5 Green Star Hotel.

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not Green Star compliant, that new product requires thorough research and analysis as do all the other components the proposed Green Star product relates to, to ensure they are all equally compatible. For example, a change away from standard timber stains on our project triggered questions to revisit flame spread, colour selection, adhesion, availability, ease of application, safety, warranties, and so on. On first look, a product might have the attribute we need, but it’s not until we’re really digging into all of the product attributes that we can be certain it is compatible. But we’re nearly there.

So the Design rating comes first, and then the hotel will receive a Build rating, which reflects how closely the Design rating was followed in reality. When will that be signed off?The design stage was one part of it, but the delivery is another again. That’s where we have to do what we say is going to happen on the drawings. The evidencing of that process might take up to 12 months after completion. Inevitably there will be some elements that

we’re debating through that period. But we are all working hard to keep all our paperwork and evidence trails up to date, with people looking over shoulders to provide the support and expertise.

Have there been areas where you’ve learned a valuable lesson for the next project Britomart builds to a Green Star rating? For The Hotel Britomart, we need to get 60 points to get our 5 Green Star Build rating and we got our Design rating based on 67 or 66. That leeway is important. We’ll get there on the timbers and the finishes, but that could have been one that could have dropped off. As much as we’ve tried to be careful with the waste that comes off the site and we’ve been diligent with the recycling, we weren’t able to evidence it well. The challenge was that New Zealand systems around this area aren’t fit for purpose yet. So we’ve had to let that point go. We don’t feel that we’ve been poor in our waste disposal – we think we did well – but we just couldn’t evidence it. That’s something to learn for next time.

“The design stage was one part of it, but the delivery is another again. That’s where we have to do what we say is going to happen on the drawings.”

Above Campbell Willamson. Right A rendering of The Hotel Britomart as seen from Takutai Square, plus two views of a mockup room with drone views inserted. Mockup room photos by Samuel Hartnett. Rendering courtesy of Cheshire Architects.

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COVID-19 AND SUSTAINABILITY

I sit on a mayoral task force and at the moment we’re talking about how to build out of these things, what we need to do to re-stimulate the economy. Infrastructure is a classic one. We’re asking, “What’s the infrastructure that we need now, because the old infrastructure is failing us”. If you’ve got a car now and you need to get to work, you can spend an hour sitting on the motorway. What a waste of time. It’s unpleasant, you arrive feeling agitated. Imagine if we could soften and quieten all that down to make getting to work pleasant. That’s how we need to view the shift we’re going through. This is a one-in-100-year opportunity.

Did the world learn anything from other pandemics that applies here?Yes it did actually, and also from the GFC. My son is doing his speech on the pandemic, and he’s been looking at the Spanish Flu and what innovation came out of that. There was a lot of innovation around medical stuff, photography, movement, how we moved. A lot came out of because we were forced into a time of innovation. That’s going to happen now too. With the Global Financial Crisis, Uber came out of that. People started looking at new ways of moving around. People started asking how it could look better for them. I think those questions will start being asked more now. How do we create better houses, better infrastructure, things that work better for us and also for the planet? That’s an important question for businesses – how do they remain economically sustainable while they’re becoming more sustainable for people and the planet. That’s a challenge that Uber, for example, doesn’t seem to have solved yet.

If you think about what COVID is – as with SARS and other diseases – it’s been an example of us not looking after animals pretty well. A lot of viruses or vectors, come from the ways that we’ve been doing things poorly, which leads to an out-of-control impact across society. So that’s a big learning for us. We can’t pretend we are not part of nature. We are. Although it’s a virus that has hit us this time, it could be any number of

big events that can hit businesses across their supply chain and cause disruption. What businesses have to get really good at doing is understanding their risk profiles and making sure they can handle some kind of disruption like COVID has caused. That’s real resiliency. You have to know you can handle a sideswipe and you have already thought to some degree about what it might be.

What services or resources can you offer to businesses who are interested in increasing their resilience and revising their models to be more sustainable?At the moment we’re open-sourcing our resources. We’ve got stacks of resources on everything from how do you really efficiently do a retrofit of your office, through to climate change and so on. There are more than 20 really useful resources online. We’re also starting to do a big piece of research around climate action, targeting SMAs. A lot of small and medium businesses are getting pressure to know what they’re doing around climate and they don’t have a clue. We’re doing a big piece of work with a whole lot of agencies and corporates that would make it really easy for anyone to know what the right thing is to do, but also inspire them with the new kinds of business models that are starting to emerge. That’s a big piece of work.

What are the key changes that consumers can make to support businesses as we emerge?As consumers there are two critical things. First, ask what the thing you’re buying is made of – has whoever’s made it thought about where it’s come from? Have they got a good supply chain, are they paying people well, is the stuff that’s incorporated into whatever you’re buying safe? The other thing is whether you know what’s going to happen to it at the end of its life. You know you can either send it back to the people you bought it from, or you know it can be reused or refilled or recycled. Those are things that all consumers can do right now, and get behind New Zealand companies that are doing those things well.

For more than two decades as founder of the Britomart-based Sustainable Business Network, RACHEL BROWN has helped guide corporates, government agencies, small business and individuals towards greater sustainability.

After the lockdown following the COVID-19 outbreak, Rachel talks about her hopes that April’s shutdown might be a kind of reset that helps accelerate New Zealand businesses moving towards a more sustainable way of operating.

something to be done. Now that conversation has stopped and we’re all talking about jobs. What we’re saying is yes, we do need jobs but we can’t keep doing it the way we’ve been doing it, which is burning up the climate.

So we looked at the 2017 figures of greenhouse gas emissions and worked out what had reduced because of lockdown. What we’ve worked out is that about a quarter of emissions have dropped, most of that from transport but also some from waste. We’re not buying as much stuff, we’re not creating as much stuff. We’re not building – which is a massive contributor to carbon. What we have a chance to do now is not race back to the way we were doing things. We get a chance to stop, redesign and not come back into a system that our kids are getting angry with us about.

So, to take transport as an example, obviously we can’t just stay home – although we might commute a bit less now that we’re better at working from home. What does a different transport future look like? I think what we’ve avoided doing forever is investing in alternative systems. We’ve invested in roads forever, and we spend a lot of money investing in roads. What we’ve got to do is change that investment. We still need to build things, but let’s build wider footpaths that people can enjoy walking up and down, wider and better cycleways. Imagine if we invested in quality electric buses that are really nice to travel in. They’re not massive but they’re more frequent. Quieter, less polluting. I’d love to use that kind of publicly invested transport system.

So it’s about a shift to clean vehicles rather than reducing travel?There are some really neat companies coming through, like the electric car share company Zilch. Imagine if you didn’t need to own a car any more, but you could get access to one of the newest electric vehicles in the country just by being a member of Zilch. You don’t have to cover a warrant, rego, repairs, anything like that, but you can access it whenever you need to. Those kinds of models are starting to come through. In the future we won’t even need to own cars. Imagine what you’d free up in space in garages where cars sit a lot of the time. All that extra space in your home instead of a smelly polluting car.

So changes to help the climate also have positive flow-on effects in the personal space.It’s just about changing that initial investment.

MELINDA WILLIAMS: Hi Rachel, nice to see you in this sustainable new world of Zoom meetings! RACHEL BROWN: Yes, hello! I was on Breakfast this morning, and that was one of the things we talked about – we’ve all been forced to learn to use [new technologies] and now we’re starting to go − is it time to work from home? When we can go back to work, we might not need or want to go in every day any more. We’ve always done that at SBN, worked from home a lot. Until recently we’ve had an office at Britomart but the building is being refurbished, so we will be moving out. In fact, we were meant to move out on the first Friday under lockdown, but we couldn’t do it! So technically we are still there.

How’s your team at the Sustainable Business Network doing?We’ve got a small team – 22 staff – and to keep that team active, every morning we meet, connect in for an 8.30 start. Just to keep people connected. I think there’s a process that the organisation and the staff need to get their head around. You do need motivation, you need to feel like you’re still contributing, and to do that you need a bunch of systems. That’s what we’ve done, set up our staff so we stay connected.

You’ve published some research recently on how the lockdown has affected carbon emissions, haven’t you?One of our team, Phil Jones, has tried to understand the implications around climate. Before this all happened, we were all talking about climate very actively, our kids were protesting, there was a lot of demand for

“This is a one-in-100-year opportunity ... What we have is a chance to do now is not race back to the way we were doing things. We get a chance to stop, redesign and not come back into a system that our kids are getting angry with us about.”

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PROMOTING SUSTAINABILITY

Plantsman CALEB SCOTT runs the nursery at The Landing, the Bay of Islands property that is also owned by Cooper and Company, the team behind Britomart’s 15-year regeneration.

The Landing has been the focus of a 20-year reforestation and wetland restoration programme. Last Christmas, Caleb brought 6,000 native seedlings from The Landing to Britomart for a ‘Dreaming of a Green Christmas’ giveaway that gave seedlings away in exchange for donations to the Native Forest Restoration Trust. Over $8,000 was raised for the trust, and thousands of seedlings planted in gardens across the city.

JEREMY HANSEN: Caleb, you were about 11 years old when you started working on your family nursery in Whāngarei, so raising trees is kind of in your DNA. What sort of things would you do on the family nursery?

CALEB SCOTT: I really wanted to be going and having fun and building huts in the bush and all that sort of thing! So the carrot at the end of the stick would be that we’d get to go to the movies if we helped our parents in the nursery. We would just help potting plants up and things like that. I became a landscaping contractor when I left school aged 18 and did that for 20-odd years. Then about 10 years ago I came to work here at The Landing full-time, and began the whole process of collecting seed and turning them into seedlings we use here for planting and also sell to contractors and other nurseries. When you pack a seed you’ve harvested out into a small pot and it grows, that’s quite exciting.

How many trees do you think you’ve propagated and sold or planted in that 10-year period? It must be a lot.

Probably 750,000 or 800,000, give or take a few thousand. Nowadays we’re raising about 110,000 plants a year in the nursery, and selling 70,000 or 80,000 to other nurseries and contractors. Last year we probably planted about 23,000 plants here at The Landing. When we initially planted here, it was just about covering the land and establishing that habitat, with about 50 percent mānuka. You may not use a lot of species originally while you’re establishing the cover. Now we’re diversifying that.

You say reforestation normally takes about 5,000 plants per hectare, which means the plants you’ve raised from seeds here at The Landing have collectively cover a total of about 160 hectares in a whole range of different locations. How does that make you feel – given you’re running the nursery alongside your other responsibilities in your job here? Oh, I think it’s fantastic. And I think as a nation we need to be doing more. We should all be looking after our catchments, for example – what this means [gestures towards

Above The Landing in the Bay of Islands. Right Caleb Scott has been pivotal to reforestation efforts at The Landing. Photos by Joe Hockley.

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the rehabilitated wetland area] is that any water running off the land here goes through this big filter system and reaches the ocean a lot cleaner. It doesn’t take long for things to bounce back. You plant trees in an area where there’s been no vegetation for many, many years and within weeks you’ve got birds coming in. A couple of years later when you’ve got some growth, you’ve got nesting, and the wildlife ramps up. You start creating a whole new ecosystem.

In your time as a landscape contractor and, more recently, a nurseryman, you’ve seen whole forests grow, haven’t you? I think the groups I was in as a contractor, collectively over 20 years we probably put as many as eight million trees in the ground. We’ve changed landscapes from pasturelands to emerging bushland.

What about up here at The Landing, where you’ve been working for so long? Here at The Landing, we’ve put about 1.2 million trees in the ground in the last decade and a half.

Why do you think there’s a perception that native trees don’t grow quickly enough for some people, and some gardens? I think in the past there hasn’t been enough knowledge about where species should ideally be planted – people have just gone and planted stuff willy nilly. If you don’t have the right plants in the right environment, they’re not going to perform – you can’t put a wetland tree in a dry area.

Here at Britomart, you’ve been in Takutai Square advising people on what to plant from the range of seedlings you’ve raised that we’re giving away. Are people receptive to your advice? Yes, they are. And this is a good exercise which, if we repeat it, will mean I’m more aware of the needs of people who come to pick up native plants. A lot of people want trees that will live happily in pots in apartment-style living situations. And there aren’t a lot of people who can plant a kahikatea in a city backyard without eventually causing some issues with the neighbours. So people have been keen to hear what’s right for their situation. And they’re really enthused about trees in general, which is great.

“It doesn’t take long for things to bounce back. You plant trees in an area where there’s been no vegetation for many, many years and within weeks you’ve got birds coming in. You start creating a whole new ecosystem.”

Far left and left Two views of The Landing, the Bay of Islands property owned by Cooper and Company (which also owns Britomart) that has been the subject of a 20-year reforestation and wetland restoration programme. Above Queues as the Dreaming of a Green Christmas giveaway of 6,000 native seedlings from The Landing opens in Britomart’s Takutai Square in December 2019. The seedlings were given away in exchange for donations to the Native Forest Restoration Trust. Photos by Joe Hockley.

THE LANDING is a 1000-acre coastal peninsula

property in the Bay of Islands, home to rich natural

bird life – including a dense population of kiwi –

regenerated wetlands and 43 sites of historical and

cultural significance that are held in a charitable

trust. The property operates businesses in luxury

guest accommodation and event hosting, a

commercial nursery, vessel hire, and a boutique

vineyard and winery.

Since coming into Cooper and Company’s

ownership in 1999, the property has been

extensively replanted with over a million native

trees, and wetland areas have been regenerated.

This year, The Landing will release its first

Sustainability Report, outlining the sustainability

status of its current operations, and identifying

targets to develop a systematised framework for

tracking and improving energy, water, chemical

and waste management, as well as monitoring

biodiversity, formalising social sustainability

commitments and identifying carbon offset

capability.

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Sustainability is not just about saving electricity and water. It’s also about building community. Hāngi master REWI SPRAGGON’s hāngi pit occupied the lawn in Britomart’s Takutai Square for Matariki 2019 – and became the heart of an exuberant city celebration.

It started at 5am in the dead of winter: a plume of manuka smoke rising from Takutai Square’s lawn, up past EY and Westpac’s offices, and into the pre-dawn sky. Rewi Spraggon was lighting the fire in a hāngi pit that would feed thousands of people (and their Instagram feeds) over the next five days.

SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

Rewi Spraggon and his team from the Māori Kitchen had no idea how popular their food would be when they initially lit their hāngi pit in Takutai Square at the beginning of Matariki 2019. But that popularity became as clear as that starlight pre-dawn sky just a few hours later, when a lunchtime queue snaked all the way around the lawn. Here, Rewi talks about indigenous people’s deep understanding of sustainability, and the pleasure of holding a community celebration in the heart of the city.

JEREMY HANSEN You laid a hāngi pit on the lawn in Takutai Square. What was it like for you to cook there?REWI SPRAGGON Cooking in the middle of Britomart was an eye-opener for people in the precinct and in the wider downtown area. It was like the smoke from that first morning signalled everyone. You could see people were fascinated with the fire in the square. I’ve never seen a line for my food that big in my life! We were getting a lot of Kiwis that hadn’t had a hāngi for 20-30 years. And there were a lot of immigrants from other cultures who were really keen to physically see the hāngi pit and smell the aromas and taste the food. It was humbling to see what people were really interested in it. When you physically have the pit on site - the physical presence of fire, rocks and soil – then that becomes something new and exciting.

What was it like for you, cooking in that space?It was like being on stage and showcasing the art of Māori cooking to the world. I would walk over towards the pit and all the cameras would come out. You just have to make sure from a tikanga perspective you are upholding and maintaining the integrity of your culture. So it was humbling when we had kaumatua and elders there, and you could tell they were proud of us, proud of our culture, proud that we were doing this in the middle of the city. We’re talking about the sustainable aspects of an event like this today. Can you talk about that directly?Indigenous cultures have always been sustainable. We’ve been doing it for centuries. There was never any choice but to be sustainable back then, because without being that, there was no survival. Nowadays, we’re also paying attention to things like serving our food in potato starch plates, but the most important thing at Matariki here at Britomart was that we fed people and ate as a community in this square. As a society, we don’t do that enough: We don’t sit out on a long table and talk as we eat and share food and stories. We’ve been so isolated from our communal style of living. This is the oldest style of cooking in this country. Sometimes you have to go back to the source of that, sharing knowledge, sharing everything about the future: local knowledge, local produce, all that sort of stuff. Aotearoa is getting better at that.

Above Hāngi master Rewi Spraggon at the hāngi pit in Takutai Square. Right Lining food baskets with leaves before they’re lowered into the hāngi pit. Photos by Adrian Malloch.

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“Indigenous cultures have always been sustainable. We’ve been doing it for centuries. There was never any choice but to be sustainable back then, because without it, there would be no survival ... The most important thing at Matariki here at Britomart was that we fed people and ate as a community in this square.”

Left Crowds line up for a taste of Rewi Spraggon’s hāngi cooking in Takutai Square during Matariki. Above The Māori Kitchen team did an extra shift on the first Saturday night of Matariki to accompany a free concert by Māori musicians.

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For World Park(ing) Day, architects CHRIS HOLMES and ANNA TONG of Britomart-based CAAHT Studio created a striking installation that asked people to rethink the amount of public space we dedicate to car parking.

For 15 years, the third Friday in September has been Park(ing) Day, a global celebration in which urbanists of all stripes (architects, landscape architects, community groups and more) take back car parks for the people. At Britomart, CAAHT Studio were one of six design firms that set up installations in Tyler Street for the day.

WORLD PARK(ING) DAY

Park(ing) Day started in San Francisco in 2005, when urban designers Blaine Merker and Matthew Passmore installed astroturf, a park bench and a potted tree in a parking space there. They noticed how much social interaction occurred in a space where none happened before; Park(ing) Day soon became a global phenomenon. In 2019 at Britomart, six local design firms – Peddle Thorp, Beca, Boffa Miskell, WSP Opus, Isthmus and CAAHT – took over carparks on Tyler Street. Here, Chris Holmes and Anna Tong of CAAHT talk about their installation and how it was received.

JEREMY HANSEN: Tell me about your design for World Park(ing) Day. What was the idea behind it?CHRIS HOLMES: We wanted to create a social space across the footpath by providing a super-sized chaise lounge on the street that enabled people to sit and look back towards the shopfront, forming a kind of transient lounge that passers-by found themselves walking through. This space was further reinforced by creating a floating cloud of white balloons that formed a billowing ceiling above the chaise, and acted as a beacon for our installation when viewed from afar.

You’re a busy architecture practice. What’s the benefit of spending time as a team on non-billable activities like this?ANNA TONG: The benefits are manifold, from team-building within the practice via the design and realisation of the project, to engaging with architecture school students (a number of whom helped us with the installation), to engaging with clients who came to view the installation (an impromptu meeting was held on the chaise), to having our turn to directly contribute to our Britomart neighbourhood community.

The purpose of Park(ing) Day is to make people think about the amount of public space we dedicate to cars. If you had your way, how would you like to see these parking spaces used?ANNA TONG: The streets should be used more for different functions, so that after hours you might transform the car parks into evening watering holes, and then a pop-up street market on the weekend! People-centric activities alongside the more mundane car parking function.

Above Live music featured at one of the Park(ing) Day installations on Tyler Street. Right Kids in a carpark, enjoying CAAHT’s Park(ing) Day installation. Photos by Charles Buenconsejo.

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“The streets should be used more for different functions, so that after hours you might transform the car parks into evening watering holes, and then a pop-up street market on the weekend! People-centric activities alongside the mundane car-parking functions”

Top left The CAAHT team on their Park(ing) Day installation. Left and above Tyler Street also featured installations from architecture and landscape design firms Peddle Thorp, Beca, Boffa Miskell, WSP Opus and Isthmus. Photos by Charles Buenconsejo.

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PUBLIC ART

Artist JONATHAN KAY came to Britomart with two tonnes of ice in an installation that delivered a message about climate change and New Zealand’s melting glaciers.

Under the ice, he placed lengths of fabric treated with photographic chemicals which created patterns on the fabric as sunlight refracted through the water on it. The implicit message about melting glaciers was made starker by the second-warmest July on record, which meant the ice melted faster than expected. Later, the fabric under the ice was dried and hung as an installation in the Atrium on Takutai. The work was commissioned by Britomart as part of Gus Fisher Gallery’s exhibition The Slipping Away: Art and the Ocean Deep.

JEREMY HANSEN: Tell us more about your work Negative Mass, which started out as an installation in Takutai Square, and is now a trio of dramatic fabric strips hanging in the Atrium on Takutai. JONATHAN KAY: The work is a giant photographic print that records the melting of fifteen 140kg blocks of ice over a period of three to four days. Negative Mass is an artwork that aims to raise awareness about the perilous future of glaciers and how they are melting away as a consequence of climate change.

What led you into this subject area?My practice has developed a keen interest in pushing the boundaries between art and science as a way of interrogating landscape. This interest led me to start investigating glaciers in 2016 and this has been my focus ever since. I am particularly interested in how photography can talk about a landscape without it being a direct representation. After the ice has melted, patterns are left on the fabric beneath it. How does that happen?Negative Mass is a large-scale photogram, which is a camera-less photographic process that records through contact with objects and light-sensitive material. In this case, the

objects are the fifteen 140kg blocks of ice and the light-sensitive material is linen coated with the chemistry from the 19th-century process of the cyanotype. The patterns are the result of the reaction between light-sensitive material and the physical forces; water, ice, and light.

The fabric under the melting ice was later installed in the Atrium on Takutai. How does a work like this help people think about climate change?Negative Mass demonstrates a simple truth: due to a global temperature increase glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. The purpose of this work is to create an interruption in a public space and aims to trigger a conversation where people could contemplate climate change. This was an offsite component of an exhibition being held at Gus Fisher Gallery in Shortland Street. How does it fit into the gallery’s overall theme?The Slipping Away exhibition was about environmental advocacy and considering our connection with the sea. Negative Mass connects through the discussion around climate change and its impacts on our environment.

Above Artist Jonathan Kay. Right Blocks of ice melting on photosensitive linen sheets in Takutai Square. Photos by Joe Hockley.

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“Negative Mass is an artwork that aims to raise awareness about the perilous future of glaciers and how they are melting away as a consequence of climate change.”

Above As the ice melted, the water left patterns on the linen sheets beneath, thanks to the photosensitive chemicals they were treated with. Right The linen sheets were dried after the ice melted and installed in Britomart’s Atrium on Takutai.

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Landscape designer and gardener ANGELA ARROWSMITH preferred the garden centre to the playground when she was a child. Now she keeps Britomart’s lush landscaping looking verdant.

The beautiful gardens around Britomart’s Pavilions on Te Ara Tahuhu and throughout other areas of the precinct are some of the most-loved features of the neighbourhood. And that’s no accident, as a great deal of consideration goes into their care and maintenance.

GREENING BRITOMART

MELINDA WILLIAMS: Hi Angela! Where are you hunkered down at the moment, and who are you with?ANGELA ARROWSMITH: I am in Laingholm and I’m perfectly happy just with my dogs. My niece comes to visit me sometimes – we’re bubble buddies. We’re all doing great.

How long have you been working with Britomart on the precinct gardens?I will have been there three years in October, looking after all the garden arrangements. I do the changeovers, and keep the plants looking nice all the time.

The original garden design was created by Damien Wendelborn – in your maintenance role do you follow set guidelines or do you have freedom to choose?I choose everything, and have complete freedom to do so. I’d say 90 percent of the planting has changed over time. I’ve been doing it so long that I know what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. In saying that, I do sometimes play tricks on the plants and will prune them at different times of the year so that we get more winter colour, and things like that.

How do you decide which plants to take out and put in?Most of the time when I change something out it’s because it’s been vandalised, or because it’s outgrown the pot and has become too root-bound to be sustainable in that location. When it comes to which ones I choose to put in, it’s completely driven by the environment – where the plant is located, what the wind’s doing, what’s the sun’s doing, and in Britomart’s case, how hot the pot gets. Some of the pots are steel, and they get really hot. Some plants can tolerate having hot roots a lot better than others. So it’s not just about which plants are going to look amazing. You have to think about which plants are going to endure in that exact environment and try to make them look amazing at the same time.

Do you prefer to work with natives or exotics?I like to use a lot of natives but the flowering perennials that are what really give you the colour that can be a bit lacking in natives. So the natives are there to give structure in the pots, and then they’ll be surrounded by flowering perennials and annuals.

What happens to the plants that you take out of their pots? Sometimes the staff from Britomart will take them home. If they’re the type you can replant happily, they go and live in other gardens. If they’re damaged or not the sort that will replant happily, they’ll go into my compost or the compost bins at Britomart.

How much of your time does maintaining Britomart’s landscaping take up each week?I’m there for about 20 hours every week. The rest of the time I design residential gardens under my business Lucid Gardens.

What qualities do you think Britomart’s living landscaping brings to the precinct?I think it brings a liveliness into the city, which can be quite dull and sterile. Having the plants around brings everything to life and helps people engage with the spaces and engage with the shops. And it also brings a lot of joy to people. I’m continuously getting comments about how much people enjoy walking through the gardens and taking ideas back home to their gardens, which is awesome to hear.

How many different types of plants are there within the garden, at a guess?[Laughs] I have no idea! There’s a lot more going on within the pots than most people will realise. There are different things that come up at different times of the year, some things will be cut back and you won’t know they’re there for a while. But tonnes. Hundreds.

What’s happening to the gardens during lockdown? Are they having to fend for themselves?The wonderful Britomart security team are tending to them at the moment, but I’m not allowed in there. I’m anticipating a bit of tidying up afterwards. The team did say it was all looking good last week.

“I think it brings a liveliness into the city, which can be quite dull and sterile. Having the plants around brings everything to life.”

Above Angela Arrowsmith. Above right Extensive plantings require regular maintenance at Britomart, but the presence of greenery delights visitors and workers. Photos by David St George.

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Britomart responded to the request for more bike parking in last year’s sustainability survey by creating the Britomart Bikepark, which offers parking for up to 80 bicycles in a secure, well-lit, timber-lined zone on the ground floor of the Britomart Carpark. The spaces are available for rent on a monthly basis.

Britomart installed over 30 LittaTraps in stormwater drains around the precinct as a contribution to the Sustainable Business Network’s GulfX project, which aims to improve water quality in the Waitematā Harbour. The LittaTraps collect rubbish – cigarette butts, plastic wrappers, and much more – that would otherwise have found its way into the harbour through stormwater drains.

OTHER SUSTAINABLE INITIATIVES

Britomart collaborated with the team at EY to stage an exhibition of art by students of Manurewa High School in the Atrium on Takutai for a month last year. EY have run mentorship programmes with students from the school for some time, and this was an extension of that which served as a connection between a central-city district and a South Auckland one.

The Britomart Carpark upgraded its lights to LEDs throughout the building, and as a result has reduced its lighting-related energy consumption by 55 percent.

Britomart worked with Again Again to establish a re-usable coffee cup programme that now runs in most Britomart cafes.

Community art exhibitions, new bicycle parking, LED lights leading to huge energy savings: a few of the other sustainability initiatives rolled out at Britomart this year.

We’ve also installed litter traps in stormwater drains around Britomart to catch litter that would otherwise enter the harbour, as part of the Sustainable Business Network’s GulfX project to clean up the Waitematā Harbour.

Far left A cyclist on the Quay Street cycleway, just across the road from the new Britomart Bikepark. Left Installing LittaTraps in stormwater drains around Britomart. Above left An exhibition of artwork by students from Manurewa High School, held in association with EY. Above The Britomart Carpark is now entirely lit by LED bulbs, leading to significant energy savings.

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Britomart’s annual sustainability survey is emailed to every Britomart business. It’s a way to capture a snapshot of environmental behaviour and concerns in the Britomart neighbourhood – as well as how the businesses in Britomart are adapting.

The best thing about our sustainability survey this year was that it showed strong shifts in behaviour in some areas towards more sustainable practices. The survey was conducted by email and its responses collated by Britomart-based Buzzchannel. There were 236 responses in total. Here are some of the key findings.

SURVEY

Fewer people are using cars to get to work

Meanwhile, the proportion of people making transport decisions for

environmental reasons has jumped.

DO YOU CHOOSE YOUR WAY OR METHOD OF GETTING TO WORK FOR ENVIRONMENTAL

REASONS?

2019

26% ——

2020

39%

There has also been a big increase in awareness of the NZ Green Building Council’s Green Star

ratings for buildings.

HOW DO YOU USUALLY TRAVEL TO WORK?

DO YOU USE A CAR FOR SOME OF YOUR

JOURNEY TO WORK?

2019 40% 2020 25%

We also asked specific questions about The Hotel Britomart, which will be New Zealand’s first 5 Green Star Hotel when it opens later in 2020. The response is encouraging in that it suggests greater awareness among consumers about Green Star building accreditation and performance when they’re making purchase decisions. 2019 32%

SAY IT’S IMPORTANT

2020

47%SAY IT’S

IMPORTANT

HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO YOU THAT A HOTEL HAS BEEN BUILT USING

SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS AND PRACTICES?

There is also an increase in the number of Britomart businesses

setting clear sustainability targets for their teams.

DOES YOUR COMPANY SET

SUSTAINABLE TARGETS WITHIN YOUR BUSINESS?

2019 YES 33%

——

2020 YES 44%

Each year we ask respondents whether sustainable practices are important to their businesses. The proportion of people saying

sustainable practices are important jumped significantly.

HOW IMPORTANT ARE SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES TO YOUR BUSINESS?

2019 49% 2020 59%

ARE YOU AWARE OF GREEN STAR

RATED BUILDINGS?

2019 YES 49%2020

YES 65%

54 55

BRITOMART

Britomart is founded on a 2004 agreement between the Britomart Group and Auckland Council. Cooper and Company is the asset and development manager for the Britomart Group, which holds a contract for the long-term ownership and development of the Britomart Precinct.

WAITEMATĀ HARBOUR

britomart.org/directory

CPOBUILDING

BRITOMARTCAR PARK

THEPAVILIONS

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TAKUTAI SQUARE

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ATRIUM ON TAKUTAI

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Above The nine-block Britomart precinct is situated on the edge of the Waitematā Harbour, just east of Queen Street. Below Britomart Group’s area under management is shown within the outline, bounded by Quay Street to the north, Customs Street East to the south, and also takes in the Britomart Carpark to the east.

BRITOMART

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