# Innovation

Version: 1, last updated: 23 Jun 2025

Council's Best Practice Standards

# Council's Best Practice Standards

In order to claim a truly innovative sustainable design solution, your development should meet at least one of the following criteria:

Exceed best practice standards in one or more of the other sustainable building categories.
Incorporate technologies or design strategies that deliver environmental and/or social benefits and are new to Victoria.

Change happens though innovation. Exploring innovative design solutions in your building project is the key to finding better ways of creating our built environment. Innovation is also important to help us adapt our buildings to a changing climate.

The key to innovation is being open to new ideas and being willing to spend more time in the design process, allowing for exploration, iteration, and refinement. Taking time during the design process to delve deeply into research, allowing time for ideas to evolve, and then testing those ideas can lead to creative and novel solutions.

There are a number of opportunities for building scale innovations:

Technical innovations
Social innovations
Environmental innovations
Cultural innovations

# It's time to innovate!

Innovative ideas and their implementation led us to the economic and social revolutions that we experienced throughout the last centuries. Most innovative ideas result from defining a problem or need.

The invention of the automobile was borne out of the need to travel between places more efficiently. Later, the problem of congested cities promoted the development and construction of underground trains. Similarly, it was the need to communicate more efficiently that led to the invention of the internet.

Today, we face the problem of an increasingly polluted environment that will have an increasing impact on our quality of life. Many innovations, such as renewable energy systems or new energy efficiency building technologies, have contributed to reducing our environmental footprint. While we have made huge leaps forward in the efficiency of our buildings, there is still a need to further reduce the use of energy, water and other resources.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them - Albert Einstein”

High quality award winning architectural design will often be a result of innovative design solutions.

# Exceeding best practice standards

Humans have been living in shelters, and later houses, for thousands of years. Ever since the first settlements, our living amenities and quality of life has improved.

Innovative engineering has greatly impacted the way humans inhabit buildings, from having drinking water and electricity in our homes, to today’s thermally improved building shells and highly sophisticated heating and cooling devices and other appliances. This practice of continuous improvement has also led to construction standards and systems becoming increasingly efficient.

Best practice means to exceed current industry standards. As industry practices continue to improve, so too does ‘best practice’ evolve. Taking a best practice approach will not only to lessen your impact on the environment now, but also future proof your asset and living amenities in the years to come.

“Exceeding best practice standards today will help you future-proof your asset, increase living standards and save on utility costs for many years to come.”

# Identifying synergies

Through the identification of synergies, we are able to better align a vast array of applications, functions and services. Synergies have not only provided us with new products and services but have helped us use them in more efficient and cheaper ways. Buildings also provide the opportunity for synergies that will lead to major resource and financial savings:

Solar panels can be installed as façade elements or shading devices and therefore replace other building materials while providing renewable electricity.
Green façade elements can act as a biodiversity enhancement initiative, but also provide a suite of benefits relating to shading, air purification, sound mitigation and aesthetic improvements to a building.
Hybrid photovoltaic (PV) thermal panels can be installed to generate both electricity and hot water from the one panel system. Hybrid panels produce energy through the PV system at the front of the panel and recover extra energy (that is typically lost through use of standard solar panels) to heat water via a heat exchanger at the back of the panel.
Shower drain heat recovery systems utilise heat from outgoing shower wastewater (hot water entering the shower drain and travelling through the waste piping) to heat incoming cold water feeding into the shower.

With resources becoming increasingly scarce and our population constantly growing, building designers face the challenge of creating more by using less – most likely by defining successful synergies.

“Synergy is when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts - Aristotle”

# Technical innovation

Technical innovations include the use of new materials and construction techniques or the adoption of smart building technology. Examples of technical innovation include:

Cross-Laminated Timber - An alternative to traditional construction materials (concrete, steel, and aluminium) enabling lower levels of embodied energy and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in materials, as well as increased thermal performance. CLT systems can also reduce the number of trades needed on a project and shorten on-site construction times.
Building Management Systems – Enabling automated control of a building’s electrical and mechanical services through use of a single digital interface to improve levels of energy efficiency and thermal performance.
Dynamic glazing - Also known as smart glazing, is a type of glass technology that can change its optical properties, such as light transmission, heat transmission, and opacity, in response to external factors or user controls.

Social innovations include a suite of innovations that add social value to a building and put human connection or wellbeing at the centre of innovation. Examples of social innovation include:

Social Balconies - purposefully designed to encourage interaction amongst residents travelling to and from their homes in apartment buildings (which can traditionally be socially isolating environments). Social balconies are also often consciously designed to allow people to enjoy fresh air and scenic views within an open-air balcony setting.
Resource sharing – Enabled through social media or other technology platforms, designers can allocate space for shared items. Technology platforms can enable the sharing of these resources and tenants borrowing off each other to reduce consumption and private storage space.
Clustered services – Particularly relevant for small footprint developments, which traditionally produce smaller areas of private open space, this innovation allows services such as water recycling, resource recovery and food growing to be delivered at cluster level.

# Environmental innovation

Environmental innovations focus on reducing environmental impact or enhancing environmental benefit. Examples of environmental innovation include:

Use of salvaged timber - Helps to maximise use of existing resources and reduces dependencies on manufacturing new timber materials. Not only are there environmental benefits of using reclaimed timber – including minimising the amount of construction waste entering landfills and sequestering carbon – but it often provides high-quality and unique products that can enhance your project's design and value.
Biophilic design – Maximising the use of natural elements, features and materials in and around a building to increase connectivity between residents and nature. Biophilic design is far-reaching and includes physical and visual access to nature, airflow, incorporation of natural light and materials.

# Cultural innovation

Cultural innovation includes innovation that enhances the cultural value of place. This includes efforts to genuinely embed Designing with Country principles and incorporate heritage elements within the building’s design process. Examples include:

Planting locally indigenous plant species – To reflect the unique landscape in which a building is located and promote user-education on First Nations Peoples’ connection to country. Locally indigenous plants are better adapted to thrive in a site’s local climate conditions (reducing water and maintenance requirements) and play a vital role in promoting the overall ecological balance of a locality.
The adoption of multi-generation housing – To accommodate the varying family structures of different cultures. This arrangement typically includes grandparents, parents, and their children, but it can also involve other combinations of generations, such as great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins either within a single build or in close proximity with spaces that can accommodate large gatherings.

# Find out more

DISCLAIMER: This Fact Sheet has been created for general information purposes only. While the Fact Sheet has been created with all due care, no warranty is given as to its suitability for any particular purpose and users should obtain their own advice relevant to their situation and specific needs. MAV or any party authorised by MAV to reproduce the Fact Sheet is not responsible for the accuracy, currency or reliability of the Fact Sheet and accepts no liability for any damage, losses whether direct or indirect, claims or expenses howsoever arising from any party who may rely on its contents.

The Council Alliance of a Sustainable Built Environment (CASBE) maintains these Sustainable Design fact sheets on behalf of our member councils. (opens new window)

CASBE is supported by the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV).

We acknowledge – the Cities of Yarra, Port Phillip, Melbourne, Stonnington and Maribyrnong – for their leadership in producing the original suite of Sustainable Design fact sheets

← Waste and Resource Recovery Best Practice Standards →