Water Sensitive Urban Design the Journey Thus Far

DES-11 entered the Environment Design Guide as a design strategies note on Water Sensitive Urban Design the Journey Thus Far. This page is an original Capes-tier briefing for landscape architects arguing for water as infrastructure. It cites the historical note ID and title so students and practitioners can keep the catalogue spine, then rewrites the public intent in new words.

The Environment Design Guide was built as a peer-reviewed series for Australian built-environment practice. Notes were numbered, edited and filed under DES, CAS, GEN, TEC, PRO and NOT, with a later papers stream. They were never meant to replace the National Construction Code or a project engineer. They were meant to give a designer a shared language before a workshop.

Read this summary if you need to explain water sensitive urban design the journey thus far to a client in Townsville, or to locate the note among its siblings in the design strategies hub.

What the original note was for

The public catalogue listed DES-11 under Design strategies. The title is the brief: Water Sensitive Urban Design the Journey Thus Far. In the years the Guide was most active, that usually meant a short, referenced essay — diagrams, a method, and enough Australian place-names to keep the advice out of generic textbook fog.

A fair contemporary reading is: start with climate and use. warm temperate coastal NSW and Victoria does not take the same section, the same glass, or the same water story as the wet tropics. Wollongong approvals will also ask different questions from a remote-area project. state environment protection authorities sit in the background of almost every EDG argument, even when the note itself is older than the current clause numbers.

We do not reprint the PDF. We also do not invent trial results, dollar savings or “number one” rankings. Where a famous project is named in the title — CH2, Docklands, Homebush, Santos, Armstrong Mobbs — we stick to widely published facts and then send you to current agency pages.

At a glance for DES-11

AIO-style answer

Water Sensitive Urban Design the Journey Thus Far is the subject of Environment Design Guide DES-11, a historical design strategies note written for Australian practitioners. Designers still use the ID to locate the idea in a report, then they test it against the NCC, climate, and a measured outcome.

Planning table — what to take to the next workshop

Photo-gateway reading

Walk from this note to a built place if you can: CH2 on Little Collins Street if you are in Melbourne; the Docklands public realm for WSUD; Newington for Olympic-era housing; a local 7-star (or better) NatHERS house if you are writing about fabric. The Guide was always happier with mud on boots than with a generic “green” adjective.

Using DES-11 in Australian practice

1. Name the decision. Is this a siting move, a fabric move, a services move, or a materials call? Write it in one sentence at the top of your ESD memo.
2. Place it on a map. Note the climate zone, BAL if relevant, and whether the lot is metro infill, campus, or regional. Townsville and Wollongong are not interchangeable.
3. Pair a sibling. Cross-link a case study if you are in a strategy note, or a strategy if you are in a case study. The Guide was designed as a web, not a stack of PDFs.
4. Update the instrument. Check Standards Australia documents such as AS 3959 for bushfire and the current NCC volume that applies to the building class. Historical Green Star or ABGR language may have shifted.
5. Close with measurement. If the note argues for comfort, water or energy, say how you will know after handover — NABERS, NatHERS, meters, or a post-occupancy conversation.

Students citing EDG notes should use the note ID, title, and “Environment Design Guide (historical series)” plus the date they accessed this rewrite. Do not quote this page as if it were the peer-reviewed original.

Australian facts that keep the advice honest

Australia’s building energy conversation runs through the NCC (including Section J for many commercial fabric and services provisions), NatHERS for houses, NABERS for operational ratings, and Green Star for voluntary project ratings. Water conversations run through state health guidelines for recycled water, local WSUD manuals, and utility trade-waste rules. Bushfire conversations run through AS 3959 and state planning overlays. None of those instruments are static.

The Guide’s value in 2026 is orientation. It still helps a graduate who has never walked a Melbourne laneway or a Darwin verandah understand why “sustainable design” changes at the tropic, the alps, and the wheatbelt. It is a poor substitute for a current certificate, an EPD, or a fire engineer.

Water as urban infrastructure

Water-sensitive urban design in Australia grew from Melbourne Water and Victorian planning practice in the late 1990s and 2000s, then spread through WSUD guidelines in NSW, South Australia and Queensland. The design sequence is still: keep rain close to where it falls, treat it through soil and plants, store it for reuse where demand exists, and only then connect to the piped network.

Docklands, Homebush and Adelaide reuse schemes remain useful teaching cases because they show maintenance, salinity and public-realm trade-offs — not just a pretty raingarden on opening day.

Related reading and attribution

This rewrite belongs with the Design strategies hub and with the notes listed below. For water, also see the Docklands WSUD trio (CAS 46–48) and DES 11. For fabric and comfort, see DES 4, EDG 79 and EDG 80. For energy on the envelope, see TEC 4 and EDG 68 MS.

Attribution: Environment Design Guide DES-11 — Water Sensitive Urban Design the Journey Thus Far. Historical path: /pages/content/des--design-strategies/des-11-water-sensitive-urban-design--the-journey-thus-far.php. Summary written for environmentdesignguide.com.au as an educational reconstruction. Trademarks (Green Star, NABERS, NatHERS, Passivhaus, NCC) remain with their owners.

If you hold the original PDF, use it. If you do not, use this page to understand the question the note posed, then read the current Australian document that now governs the answer.