Welcome Address of Dr Matthias Krups

When we conceived the Top 10 idea our motivation was to recognise architectural firms that had the greatest impact on the built environment in Southeast Asia and China. Little did we know that in the space of only three years the BCI Asia Top 10 Award would become one of the most coveted prizes in architecture in Asia. As a matter of fact, the BCI Top 10 Awards and its 2006 laureates have been included in the well-known Almanac of Architecture and Design 2007, alongside such prestigious awards as the UIA Gold Medal and the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

But for all its lofty significance and growing prestige I would not want us to forget the true, underlying meaning of the BCI Asia Top 10. Top 10 Architects create spaces for people. Their measurable claim to fame and accomplishment is that they create spaces for the greatest number of people in the national markets they operate in.

Take a look at the numbers and you understand the direct impact Top 10 architectural firms have on people’s lives: the Top 10 firms in the eight regions have designed over 295,000 residential units, hospitals for over 12,000 patients, educational facilities for over 208,000 students, 50,000 hotel rooms and over 6 million square metres of recreational and sports facilities, all due to start construction this year. That is what I call creating spaces for people.

This year’s theme, ‘Spaces for People’, addresses architecture in three dimensions. Firstly, there is the aspect of architecture that most directly impacts individuals in their daily lives: architecture providing shelter, protection from the elements and a source of aesthetic joy. Top 10 firms deliver such architecture by focusing on the needs of the individual rather than seeking to maximise a project’s iconic value.

The second dimension addresses urban planning. Imagine the scope for good and bad urban planning if you consider 295,000 residential units being delivered for occupancy in a single year. And consider the scope of benefit a Top 10 firm can provide: the scope to become a real catalyst for quality of life. There are examples today that show how one can take what would normally have been a conventional, fossil fuel reliant, zoning oriented community and turn it into a fully integrated zero-emission community with dramatically reduced power, water and discharge loads. The Dongtan Eco-City on Chongming Island, in the mouth of the Yangtze River, is perhaps a world-leading example for this. Top 10 firms, with their scope and influence, have the leverage to introduce such new ways of looking at urban design and turning it into reality. Look at the recent floods in Jakarta, and you know that our growing ecological footprint is simply not sustainable.

The third dimension of architecture, and the one closest to the heart of many of my colleagues at BCI, is the environmental dimension of Top 10 design. I stood here this time a year ago and pointed out the enormous responsibility that architects had in slowing the accelerating trend of global warming and environmental degradation. Meanwhile, a year later, after Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, after the Stern Report on the serious economic consequences of global warming and the recent, second report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the facts are on the table. Global warming is happening at an accelerating pace, it is driven by carbon emissions and it is irrefutably man-made.

As an economist I see the most straightforward and effective way to fight global warming by introducing escalating taxes on carbon emissions. Nobel laureates like George Akerlof see it exactly the same way. But most governments are hesitant to introduce such measures because they are generally unpopular with their constituencies. So you go down the food chain, and that’s where you see things starting to move. In the last 12 months over 50 cities in the world have committed themselves to significantly reducing carbon emissions—the city of London by as much as 60% by the year 2025.

Further down the food chain, you run into the architect, with his hand firmly clasped onto the global thermostat. Thanks to a few inspiring architectural thought leaders turned environmental activists, we understand today that architects directly influence close to 50% of the world’s carbon emissions and close to 70% of the world’s consumption of non-renewable fuels. We at BCI were genuinely stunned when we realised what role architects—people we talk to in the thousands every single day—have in influencing the speed of global warming. And so we decided to become advocates for environmentally sustainable development. Although at our core we are an information service that helps demand and supply find each other within in the construction sector, we started an architectural journal called FuturArc. Apart from showcasing forward-looking architecture, the journal takes a decidedly progressive environmental stance. Then, in March last year we held our first large conference on sustainable design in Beijing, together with ARCASIA, the Chinese Society of Architects and the Chinese Society of Sustainable Development. This event was followed by a second conference on green building in Sydney in September last year.

The feedback we got from all of this was more than encouraging. So we are now planning a whole tour of sustainable design conferences to be held in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Delivering spaces for millions of people brings with it a duty for moral leadership. I have no doubt that the BCI Top 10 architects understand that duty, and that they will help build a world that will be a sustainable and liveable place for our children.