About BASE

Introduction

BASE (Building a Sustainable Environment) is a simple, introductory-level green building assessment for new office, retail and mixed use buildings to help the Greater Christchurch rebuild developed by the New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC) in conjunction with Christchurch City Council and property industry experts.

BASE provides building owners and project teams with a tool to benchmark environmental features. The standards within the tool have been set to provide a moderate increase in green building practices over standard industry practice and Building Code requirements. The standard has been designed to be achievable for both small and large buildings.

Categories

In order to meet the standards within the BASE tool, buildings must address certain criteria across five categories:

1. Site
2. Services
3. Comfort
4. Facilities
5. Materials

Types

The criteria within the BASE tool are designed to address a range of base building types, including:

1. commercial office space
2. retail spaces (shop, café, restaurant or bar)
3. apartment buildings (three storeys or higher)
4. mixed-use buildings (a combination of the above)