1st Quarter 2012
Contemplating Consumption

Retail and Greening, it seems, have not integrated well; there are too few noteworthy Green malls in Asia. Vincent Lim's commentary (Mall Madness) goes some way to explaining the void. Writing from the capital of over-the-top consumption, Dubai, he probes the mind of shoppers, their willingness to surrender to the siren's call of opulence and acquisition. Truth is, he tells us, malls are a reflection of ourselves, a mirror into our psyches. We want more; far more than we need. Why then should the mall—pandering to our appetites—settle for less?

This said, there are signs of change. Some retailers in the US—designing their outlets to be day lit—are hoping that occupant comfort will equal, over time, customer loyalty. Some retail chains in Europe (see The Replay Concept) are crafting retail space as an antidote to "modern urban life".

Tying in with the theme of consumption, there are reports in this issue from several recent gatherings: the International Green Building Conference, Singapore, Sustainable Buildings, Helsinki, and the FuturArc Forum and Green Market Exhibition that toured SE Asia and Hong Kong (Special Report).

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4th Quarter 2011
Inside-Out│Outside-In

Truth be told, our love for things natural is a well-worn, somewhat frayed, idea in Architecture. The Modern movement, at its point of inception over a century ago, was an attempt at (re)connecting us with the natural world—light, air, sun—underpinned by the notion that all buildings should address biological and social needs (what we now broadly label as Wellness).

In this issue, we look at a number projects that have blurred the boundaries, between the indoors and outdoors. The India Glycols office building is a new corporate headquarters in Noida, New Delhi, India that unlike its boxy, central-service core neighbours, is a series of stacked narrow plan-depth blocks that is all about courtyards, light, greenery, terraces and views. The Maximum Garden House in Singapore is a suburban home that strategically stretches the garden from ground onto roof, via an intricate interlocking of indoor-outdoor spaces. Both projects approach form and spatial planning with the idea that the best interior is really the outdoors. In the Main Feature, Jalel Sager looks at the concept of biophilia and makes the case that buildings must link up with natural systems, reconnecting us to our natural selves.

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3rd Quarter 2011
Green

The Green issue first appeared four years ago, padded with a back-of-magazine supplement in which we listed winners of the FuturArc Prize (FAP). The competition had been launched in 2007 as an Asia-wide platform for Green design ideas. This supplement later doubled in size when it was expanded to include the FuturArc Green Leadership Award (FGLA). The Green issue is, to be semantically precise, our Green Awards issue.

We celebrate vision and leadership here with provocative ideas and buildings. This year, we have a terrific crop of projects from the FGLA which make up the bulk of the content. Two are strong enough to make it to the FuturArc Showcase: Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Singapore and the Suoi Re Multi-functional Community House in Vietnam. Their search for community and individual wellness is—here we concur with the competition judges—simply remarkable. They remind us that, all said and done, the human condition is what it’s all about; that and a healthy respect for the environment.

Also check out the FuturArc Interview with Manit Rastogi, founder of Morphogenesis, a design practice based in New Delhi, India, that has become internationally recognised for works that blend architecture and urbanism.

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2nd Quarter 2011
Doing More with Less

We live in a time of haste, a culture of throw-away consumerism. Even buildings—for all the resources it takes to make one—have become commodities that are too easily torn down.

In this issue, we devote ourselves to the idea of renewal—retrofits, restorations and upgrades—for community and environment. Chu Lik Ren, in the Main Feature, speaks of the challenge of injecting new activity and modern conveniences into historically worthy structures. In the FuturArc Interview, mechanical engineer extraordinare Lee Eng Lock who has built his reputation on a portfolio of projects, many of them retrofits, speaks candidly of the persistent problems of energy waste in buildings.

Projects featured include the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Headquarters in Manila, retrofitted with the objective of improving occupant comfort, and the Environment Protection Authority (EPA), Victoria, a pre-loved building developed into a sustainable commercial office building.

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1st Quarter 2011
Humanising Urban Networks

What connects a city? What humanises it? What makes it more sustainable? Is it just technology and hardware?

There is no shortage of hardware in this issue: train stations, bridges, transport hubs, water purification and district cooling systems. But included are also projects that speak of new software: an infrastructure of green and blue networks in which biodiversity and ecosystems are the desired outcomes. The Showcase features three examples of Green infrastructure—a life support system for the city provided by a network of interconnected natural ecosystems—including The High Line project in New York City, USA; Eco-Boulevard in Vallecas, Madrid; and Henderson Waves in Singapore.

In the FuturArc Interview, we speak with Bill Reed, founding board member of the US Green Building Council who advocates that we uncover patterns of how we inhabit the world. The question of infrastructure is thus less ‘problem solving’ and more ‘pattern reading’.

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4th Quarter 2010
Wind, Water, Ecology

In our quest to be close to Nature, do we physically alter it? Do we damage it irreparably? What is that two-hour flight to an eco-resort costing the natural world? In this issue we showcase two resorts in Thailand owned by Six Senses. The first, on Yao Noi Island, tiptoes around a fragile eco-system; the other, in Phuket, repairs a less-than-pristine site. Common to both is the investment made in back-of-house systems that plug the resort into loops and flows of the site, for instance, recycling water, returning nutrients to the soil, etc. Other ‘eco’ projects featured include the Borneo Eco-Wellness Resort & Spa, the Xixi wetland park region in Hangzhou, China, and the amazing Heritance Kandalama by the late Geoffrey Bawa.

Ecotourism aside, this issue also belongs to a bumper FuturArc Interview in which we juxtapose conversations with two important voices of Asian architecture: Shigeru Ban and Vo Trong Nghia.

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3rd Quarter 2010
Green

As editorial content goes we are pleased with this one; it is packed with—as we like to call them—‘projects with punch’. These are more than buildings; they offer us a point of view on what it means to be sustainable in Asia.

This bumper crop of projects comes, in part, from the newly launched competition: the BCI Green Design Award. This Award, in its first year of competition, was an open call for submissions of recently completed projects in Asia and Australia. In the emerging milieu of submissions there appear to be two schools of thought on the ‘what and how’ of Green design. The first is that of assertive technology; of deep energy cuts and carbon emissions. The other speaks of local sensibility—climate, materiality, community—of ‘making more with less’. The new Award is sibling to the more established FuturArc Prize, now in its third year.

Also check out the FuturArc Interview with Amory Lovins. Lovins, for anyone unfamiliar with the Rocky Mountain Institute at which he is Chairman and Chief Scientist, is a thought leader and visionary on the subject of energy.

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2nd Quarter 2010
Education

In looking at Education this issue, we cast the net wide, selecting campuses and schools in Asia that broadly speak of sustainability, from resource conservation to synergy with climate and nature. Does their design reinforce what is then taught in the classroom? In most cases, we cannot be sure (but we hope it does).

The sole union of design and curriculum that we could find is the FuturArc Showcase: Green School, Bali. Its cofounder, John Hardy, and director, Ronald Stones OBE, are also subjects of The FuturArc Interview.

We have also invited professors from several universities to tell us how they have (re)fashioned curriculum around sustainability. The Main Feature is a collage of perspectives from some of the top institutions in the region. It is prefaced with a contribution from Robert and Brenda Vale at the University of Wellington, New Zealand, who have been long-time advocates for a rethink of design pedagogy.

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1st Quarter 2010
The New Workplace

“Work”, as we know it today, has become unfettered by time and place, spilling out of the 2-by-2 cubicle, the 5-day workweek. If tasks associated with work cannot be contained as before, this begs the question: what happens to the workplace?

In their reflections on the evolving workspace, Carlos Montana and Andrea Garcia examine how office interiors have evolved, inside-out, shaping and reshaping the meaning of “workspace”. Looking from outside-in, Calvin Low, in a second commentary, discovers that the office building has its own agenda. It wants to be a landmark, a corporate icon, a “tower of power”, as he calls it. In addition, Tan Beng Kiang revisits Menara UMNO by Malaysian architect, Ken Yeang, and its bioclimatic predecessor, the Mahaweli Building by Sri Lanka’s Geoffrey Bawa. Both buildings were crafted outside-in, with passive ventilation strategies for the office interior.

This issue also features sustainable office buildings and several adaptive reuse projects—a church, a bank, a car park—retrofitted into stylish office interiors.

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4th Quarter 2009
Architecture of Well-being

When we sat down to deconstruct the notion of well-being, that most elusive of words, we knew that part of the problem is this disconnect between what designers think is comfortable and what a building’s occupants expect. Apart from calibrating comfort, we need to revisit the fundamentals of passive design against changing lifestyles. FuturArc speaks with Wong Mun Summ and Richard Hassell of WoHa Design in The FuturArc Interview and discover that architects walk a line, as it were, between responsible passive outcomes and occupant preference for mechanical cooling. Another aspect of well-being is wellness. This issue is filled with projects, from healthcare facilities, temples and churches to resorts and sports amenities, each with its own take on what wellness means.

The FuturArc Showcase is a project we think best exemplifies the union of mind, body and soul. It features a small community project in the rugged terrain of Bhutan that seeks to connect its occupants, a community of novice monks, with their inner selves—tradition, culture and community—and an external reality—land, climate and activity.

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The Green issue last year was a milestone. It was our biggest bestseller to date and was well received internationally. This year, there was no shortage of projects vying for coverage. However, we’ve obliged every submission to FuturArc to align to a common definition of Green with reporting on consumption, waste, occupant well-being, etc. Granted, this is the lexicon of Green rating tools and sometimes the answers are fuzzy, but it is a start. In the projects featured, there is a serious attempt to quantify outcomes.

Green is also no longer synonymous with soulless architecture. The FuturArc Showcase features The Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies in Ningbo, China, in which form is deeply rooted in performance. We also speak with Maria Atkinson, Global Head of Sustainability at Lend Lease (The FuturArc Interview) who shares her thoughts on climate change, investing in capacity building and innovation, and connects the dots between policies and profits. In the Special Supplement we feature winners of FuturArc Prize 2009 and the newly launched BCI Asia Top Ten Green Award.

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2nd Quarter 2009
People

People are the single most-forgotten factor in the making of Green. Too many buildings, striving for Green Mark or LEED, forget that the core day-to-day issue is comfort and well-being. Getting it “just right” happens when there is awareness and buy-in from people the project serves. In crafting sustainable design, this is absolutely crucial.

We devote this issue to People: allies, collaborators, champions of Greening.

On this, there is the question of public awareness, how this translates to behaviour. Calvin Low digs deep into The Great Green Disconnect, investigating the gap between knowledge and action. We also report on projects that connect communities in this issue. The FuturArc Showcase features tsunami relief efforts—23 villages in Sumatra—and the lessons learnt from reconstructing community life. Lastly, we assemble a list of advocates from the region; people who wrestle with issues of climate change and the human condition. The list is not exhaustive. It is part acknowledgement, part encouragement. It is our first attempt at celebrating people who are making a difference through ideas and actions. There will be more to come.

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1st Quarter 2009
Micro-Design

The 1Q 2009 edition is by far one of the best reads we’ve assembled at FuturArc, with more distinguished voices, more provocations, than ever before. In this issue, we zoom in on the different aspects of Micro-Design—details, materials, products and components—and question how we, as a society, think of production; the making of things.

Cheah Kok Ming quotes Mies van der Rohe and others, expounding on the “sublime poetry” that can happen when a brick is thoughtfully interfaced with another. Antonio Eraso shows off timber, as material, in all its sensual glory and speaks of the architect as “closeted craftsman”, struggling to reverse the banality of mass production. We are also honoured to speak with Janine Benyus, author of the highly influential book Biomimicry. In addition, special coverage is given to the World Sustainable Building Conference (SB08) held in Melbourne in September 2008. The SB Conference is a milestone event, held once every three years, that charts the course of sustainability worldwide.

In line with what has been driving editorial content for some time, FuturArc also sports a new tagline: Architecture, Design, Sustainability | Asia-Pacific.

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4th Quarter 2008
Home

The FuturArc team takes a look at how the concept of Home has evolved, how we celebrate it and (sometimes) fudge it.

You will find in this issue homes for the well-heeled that are sensitive to climate, context and environmental outcomes. Case in point, the FuturArc Showcase this issue is the Linked Hybrid in Beijing. But we also wanted to show something about how the other half lives; where a home is not big-name designers and engineering superlatives, where it says something about community and craftsmanship. As such, for the second FuturArc Showcase project, we feature the work of Anna Heringer in Bangladesh in which architects, local craftsmen and villagers jointly unearthed the beauty of mud and wood.

Housing is also put into the sustainability context by Professor Ray Cole from University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) in his article “Bringing home the realities of climate change”. In addition, FuturArc speaks with Ms Louise Cox, the newly elected President of the International Union of Architects (UIA), who by her job description, is the voice of the architectural profession worldwide.

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