Established in 1992 on a cold Melbourne evening as the Nylex sign clicked over to 6°, Six Degrees has grown to become one of Melbourne’s most respected and revered Architecture firms.
The founding principle of Six Degrees is to address human needs through the built form. This approach has made Six Degrees a specialist in the creation of high-use environments throughout Australia, across workplaces, learning, retail, hospitality, commercial and residential buildings. The practice delivers design solutions and buildings for commercial and government clients, in new and heritage places, while also develop planning and urban design strategies to create new urban spaces and to activate underperforming civic and retail precincts.
Sustainability has always been a cornerstone of thinking at Six Degrees, making the practice experts in the creation of socially inclusive, sustainable buildings, interiors and urban spaces. Over 30 years the practice has developed a sophisticated understanding of everything from basic passive thermal design principles to more complex technological sustainable design solutions, and has been recognised through numerous state and national sustainability awards. This expertise allows the practice to evaluate each project individually and provide the client firstly with a design that performs well from first principals, and secondly with a series of options that can be evaluated, priced and prioritised. Tactical interventions such as rainwater capture, solar technology, new energy-efficient materials, inventive recycling of materials and strategic use of a site all provide for the environmentally responsive buildings the practice designs. Everything from CLT construction to heatpumps and embedded networks are investigated for their suitability in a project.
Above all else, Six Degrees’ strength is in the creation of highly sustainable, mixed use, social developments that encourage connections between people and offer easy access to light, ventilation and the natural environment. The practice embeds this approach in all design outcomes pursued.
No other architecture practice has had such a profound influence on this city’s design culture as Six Degrees. Having played a lead role in the emergence of the ‘laneway bar’ as we now know it, the practice has earned its reputation through its unique play with materials and textures, while maintaining an eye for the history and contexts of the sites.
— The Melbourne Design Guide
Examples of our work include:
Nightingale 2.0 – Fairfield (banner picture left) – 8.7 star average NaTHERS rating, embedded network and carbon free in operation. Recipient of National Sustainability Award.
Brae Restaurant & Accommodation (banner picture centre) – Net zero energy and water use. Recipient of National Sustainability Award.
City of Melton Business Accelerator and Centre of Excellence (banner picture right) – Greenstar certified 6 star design rating. Recipient of National Sustainability Award.
Climate Change Action
Six Degrees Architects achieved carbon neutral certification on the 23/09/2020. To achieve this status and become carbon neutral Six Degrees Architects undertook the following process:
- Commissioned a NoCO2 audit from CRI to measure their carbon footprint for FY2020. CRI’s NoCO2 audit follows the standards outlined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (1), in addition to the international standard ISO 14064.1 (2).
- Have committed to offset their unavoidable emissions through the purchase of units in approved projects under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and Gold Standard, and
- Committed to ongoing annual auditing of their emissions.
What does Carbon Neutral Certification mean?
By meeting the requirements of the NoCO2 Program, Six Degrees Architects is certified as a Carbon Neutral Business by CRI; can be promoted and marketed as such and can display the NoCO2 Logo issued by CRI.
What Carbon Credit Projects does Six Degrees Architects purchase offsets from?
Cookstoves in Developing Nations
Nearly three billion people around the world burn wood, charcoal, animal dung, or coal in open fires or in inefficient stoves and without a chimney for daily cooking and heating. This reliance on inefficient cookstoves and fuels leads to a wide variety of environmental problems including deforestation, air pollution and climate change. Daily exposure to toxic smoke from traditional cooking practices is one of the world’s biggest, but least well-known killers.
Penetrating deep into the lungs of its victims, this acrid smoke causes a range of deadly chronic and acute health effects such as pneumonia, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and heart disease, as well as low birth-weights in children born to mothers whose pregnancies are spent breathing toxic fumes from traditional cookstoves. Women and children must risk their safety, health, and sometimes their lives, to search for and collect firewood in order to cook food over smoky, polluting open fires.
The Projects:
The Cookstoves in Developing Nations project disseminates efficient wood and charcoal cookstoves to reduce dependency on traditional biomass fuels. Replacing traditional cookstoves with fuel efficient stoves in households and restaurants reduces greenhouse gas emissions, relieves pressure on local forests and assists in reducing the incidence of chronic respiratory disease, improving livelihoods in poor communities.
Cookstoves in Developing Nations sources Verified Carbon Standard and Gold Standard carbon credits from countries including Peru, Uganda, Cambodia and China.
