CAS-36
The Integrated Design Process of CH2
Original Capes summary of historical EDG CAS-36 — The Integrated Design Process of CH2 — written for Australian case studies practice, students and ESD reports.
Environment Design Guide · Australia
ESD notes for people who still have to draw the building
A Capes-tier reconstruction of the historical Environment Design Guide: 200+ peer-reviewed design notes, case studies and papers for Australian practitioners and students — rewritten, attributed, and mapped back to their Wayback paths.
- 69 strategies
- 36 case studies
- 25 technology notes
- 46 papers
What is the Environment Design Guide?
The Environment Design Guide (EDG) was billed, in its classic years, as a peer-reviewed library of design notes for architects, landscape architects, engineers and students working in the Australian built environment. Notes were numbered and filed: DES for strategies, CAS for buildings and precincts, GEN for the wider argument, TEC for systems, PRO for materials, NOT for finding aids, and a later papers stream that ran from about EDG 65 to EDG 93.
Designers used those notes the way a good office uses a details folder. You did not copy CH2’s shower towers onto a Townsville school. You copied the habit of an integrated workshop, a climate file, and a sentence about how you would know if the idea worked after handover. Students used the IDs because tutors could see that CAS 36 was not a blog you found at midnight.
This site is an independent editorial reconstruction. Historical URLs such as /pages/content/cas--case-studies/cas-36--the-integrated-design-process-of-ch2.php 301 to modern slash paths. Bodies are original Capes summaries. They are not a scrape of subscription PDFs. They are not medical, legal or compliance advice. They are a way to keep a dense Australian ESD vocabulary on the open web.
How Australian designers still use ESD notes
A useful report in 2026 still does four things the Guide trained people to do. It names the climate — NatHERS weather, NCC zone, the Melbourne cool change, the Darwin build-up, the Hobart heating season. It names a decision, not a product. It pairs a strategy with a place (DES 11 with Docklands; DES 4 with a cool-temperate house; TEC 4 with a façade that might become BIPV). It updates the instrument: ABCB, NABERS, GBCA, CSIRO, state health and fire agencies publish the clauses that a building surveyor will actually read.
If you are writing a first ESD memo this semester, start with the design strategies hub, the CH2 case study, and either Passivhaus in Australia or the Docklands WSUD overview. Then open the glossary when a term starts doing too much work.
Section hubs
DES
Design strategies
Passive, water, energy and urban-design strategies for Australian climates.
CAS
Case studies
Built projects from CH2 to Docklands WSUD, houses, campuses and retrofits.
GEN
General issues
Policy, health, urbanism, rating tools and the wider ESD conversation.
TEC
Technology
PV, solar hot water, greywater, green roofs, ventilation and IEQ systems.
PRO
Products & materials
Embodied energy, timber, concrete, glazing, coatings and specification.
NOT
Notes
Directories, glossaries, baselines and annotated reading for students.
PAPER
Papers
Later EDG papers — Passivhaus, BIPV, biophilia, Section J and more.
Featured case studies and strategies
DES-11
Water Sensitive Urban Design the Journey Thus Far
Original Capes summary of historical EDG DES-11 — Water Sensitive Urban Design the Journey Thus Far — written for Australian design strategies practice, students and ESD reports.
DES-4
Thermal Mass in Building Design
Original Capes summary of historical EDG DES-4 — Thermal Mass in Building Design — written for Australian design strategies practice, students and ESD reports.
Papers teaser
Passivhaus in Australia
Later EDG papers asked what a European performance method means in cooling-dominated and mixed Australian climates. Read the paper, then the Australasian pathway, then the NCC — in that order.
Open EDG 79Insights
BIPV and Australian façades — reading EDG 68 with Section J
Evergreen editorial — citing case studies, reading Passivhaus papers, and taking Docklands WSUD into a 2026 precinct brief.
All insightsA short history, without nostalgia as a method
The richest public homepage captured on the Wayback Machine sits in 2016: a professional library, not a magazine. A later WordPress era accumulated spam and affiliate posts — shoes, visas, snacks — which this rebuild refuses to resurrect. The spine is 2010–2017 EDG content: roughly two hundred numbered notes plus a papers run.
Classic aliases are preserved as 301s, including /pages/content/des--design-strategies.php and article paths that used a double-hyphen before a title. If you hold an old reading list, it should still land. If you hold a spam URL, it should not.
Contact the editor at callum.sherwood.seo@gmail.com if you have a correction to an ID, a better public citation, or a university archive note. Corrections beat invented precision.
Questions, answered first
- What is the Environment Design Guide?
- The Environment Design Guide was a peer-reviewed series of design notes for Australian built-environment practitioners. This site reconstructs the public catalogue — DES, CAS, GEN, TEC, PRO, NOT and later papers — as original educational summaries that keep historical IDs and URLs.
- How do Australian designers use ESD notes?
- They steal a process: name the climate, cite a note ID, pair a strategy with a case study, then check the current NCC, NABERS or Green Star document before they specify.
- Is this the original paywalled PDF series?
- No. Original notes were often subscription content. Pages here are new writing that attributes note IDs, titles and published authorship marks.
- Where should I start?
- Read this homepage, then CH2 (CAS 36), the design-strategies hub, and either Passivhaus (EDG 79) or the Docklands WSUD trio depending on your studio question.
This independent editorial guide is not affiliated with the Australian Institute of Architects or any ratings body. Historical Environment Design Guide note IDs, titles and authorship are cited for attribution only. Summaries are original educational rewrites — not a substitute for the original peer-reviewed notes, current NCC / NABERS / Green Star documentation, or professional advice. Trademarks remain with their owners.