Grocon's new Pixel building in Melbourne, Australia

Grocon's new Pixel building, the first carbon neutral office building in Australia, has achieved the highest Green Star score ever awarded by the Green Building Council of Australia.

At an event to mark the opening of Pixel attended by Grocon CEO, Daniel Grollo, and Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Innovation, Gavin Jennings, Mr Grollo said Pixel represented the office of the future.

"We are extremely proud to have been awarded the highest Green Star score ever for an Australian building," Mr Grollo said. "We believe Pixel will lead the way in terms of carbon neutrality and sustainability for years to come."

Pixel has achieved a perfect score of 100 points under the Green Star rating system for building design, with 75 points the benchmark for 6 Star Green Star. It gained an extra five points for innovation, equating to world leadership.

Green Building Council Chief Executive Romilly Madew said Pixel was truly a green masterpiece, pushing boundaries and going above and beyond the "norm" in green building innovation.

"The Pixel Building, having achieved the maximum Green Star points ever awarded under Green Star, could arguably be said to be Australia's greenest building and is quite possibly the first building of its kind in the world," she said.

"This building will redefine the way buildings are built in the future. We congratulate Grocon for this outstanding achievement."

Included in Pixel's five innovation points were points for carbon neutrality, a vacuum toilet system, the anaerobic digestion system and reduced car parking. The water initiatives in the project mean the building could be self sufficient for water - in this context, the project is water balanced as well as carbon neutral.

Pixel is also being assessed under the USA LEED and UK BREEAM rating systems, aiming to exceed the highest score yet achieved under either of those tools.

If successful, this will place Pixel at the forefront of the 740,000 projects worldwide that are registered under the three rating schemes.

Mr Jennings said he was pleased to see the designers of Pixel are all Victorian firms - architects studio505, sustainability and services engineers Umow Lai and the structure engineer, VDM Consulting. Grocon has led the design team co-ordination and provided the initial project design briefing.

"This just proves the depth of knowledge and expertise contained here in Melbourne, where Pixel is really leading the world in terms of green design," he said.

Mr Grollo said Pixel also features a special type of concrete, known as Pixelcrete, which halves the embodied carbon in the mix.

"We also have the world's leading wind turbines, invented in Bendigo, the Melbourne University designed 'living roof', which re-introduces Victorian grassland species to the Melbourne area, and tracking photovoltaic roof panels," he said.

"The distinctive looking sun shade system on the exterior of the building will provide the maximum amount of daylight into the office space, while protecting it from too much glare and heat in the summer.

"Pixel will also feature smart window technology, whereby windows will open automatically on cool nights to enable air flow into the building to cool the structure.

"We believe that Pixel truly is the office of the future and one of the most sustainable buildings in the world."

Grocon

Grocon

Grocon is a privately owned Australian construction, development and funds management company, started by Luigi Grollo in Melbourne in the 1950s. The current CEO is his grandson, Daniel Grollo, and the company has expanded during the past 50 years to Sydney and Brisbane, and also has an office in Dubai in the Middle East. It has built many iconic structures throughout Australia, such as the 300 metre tall Eureka Tower in Melbourne. Grocon has recently completed a carbon neutral building called Pixel, believed to be the first of its kind in the world. It is also constructing facilities for the chronically homeless in Australia's eastern states, in partnership with the not for profit sector, based on the Common Ground model which originated in New York.

More from Grocon