KWA Blinds wa s keenly aware that a high Green Star rating was sought for the 36-storey Santos Place in Brisbane when it won a tender against around six rivals to provide its window furnishings.

The type of fabric selected, the way the blinds were installed and the inclusion of a facade management system all contributed to securing an ambitious 6-star rating. Santos Place is situated around 500 metres from Brisbane’s Queens Street Mall and is owned by Nielson Properties. Donovan Hill architects put together a brief about what they wanted for window coverings and Hutchinson Builders sought tenders that would comply with that specification.

A particular Vertilux fabric was selected for around 2500 blinds that were installed in the commercial office tower. This fabric was chosen because it was reasonably dense but the client did not want a blockout fabric. “A lot of the building is exposed on the northern and western facade so it needed to be a reasonably dense material,” said KWA Blinds’ Ken Wilson.

“The fabric still allows a soft glow of light and some vision through it. One of the Green Star requirements was that the fabric provide less than 10 per cent visual light transmittance [VLT] through the fabric.”

Side channels were included in the design to guide the blinds’ progress as they were lowered to prevent direct sunlight penetration.

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