By Oscar Feliu, UBS Student Scholar. Speaker Thomas Tang of AECOM said, “Green buildings have to be designed for modern challenges like climate change, indoor comfort and, importantly, human factors…There are some standards that have been launched and adopted in the last 10 years. The most relevant ones being: BREEAM (UK); LEED (US and the most shared internationally); HK-BEAM (Hong Kong); CASBEE (Japan); CABERS (Australia); GREEN MARK (Singapore); and, CHINA GREEN BUILDING LABEL (since 2006).” Tang went on to highlight the commonalities between these standards, which are the de facto features of a green building: Optimization of solar orientation; Green Roofs; Rainwater harvesting; Greywater recycling; Sun shading fins; Green facades; Solar energy; and, heating water systems.
Thomas Tang asserted that the way forward is to look for more support from the Government and Public Authorities (promote, regulate and be the example with all the public building premises available or to be built); enhance the user friendliness (i.e. ageing population); improve market appeal (not just via image, more via proven data); clear process and costs (go beyond the design orientation in order to achieve the certifications, and check the correct implementation and performance of the green buildings construction and maintenance).
Mr. Tang’s point of view, it is key, in order to improve green building standards, that Governments and Industry have to support these schemes either by examples or by making them mandatory.
The other speaker on this topic was Matthias Gelber of Maleki GmbH. His motto is to mobilize people in order to embrace and going green in any aspect of life and in any place in the world. In his opinion green certifications are driving and shaping the construction industry nowadays. However, the cost to implement the green features (around 20% increase in budget) are blocking the real implementation.
He said, “We live in “concrete” cities that are not eco-friendly designed that affecting and harming the climate change (the real case of the unpredictable weather and seasons in many parts of the World).”
Mr Gelber continued to describe the need for more communication, motivation, inspiration, examples and data to be shown and broadcasted in order to prove and show the benefits of the green building in the daily life of human beings.
According to Gelber, simple solutions can be implements in existing buildings that can help to improve the living conditions. He provided the example of an initiative he launched in Malaysia, where he and his team redesigned some of the existing premises of the buildings for recycling goods and helping the cleaners to “earn extra money”.
The audience asked for some examples of green buildings in Asia. Mr. Tang answered that a lot is going on in China, with now designed and built eco-friendly cities. He also highlighted India as a place where this new trend is in place, especially on regard natural temperature regulators.
