Talking Green

At the end of each forum, the panel of speakers sat down for a candid question and answer session among themselves and the audience. Here is an excerpt of the various issues that the experts discussed.

Dr. Ray Cole: It’s a question of will. Many graduates from the University of British Columbia, where I’ve been teaching now for 31 years, practise in Vancouver. When I’m out socially, I’ll bump into them and I ask: “How’s the green business going for you?” And typically, they answer: “The clients aren’t asking for it, the economics don’t add up.…” Excuses for why they haven’t done so. But there are also architects in Vancouver who are doing amazing things because they want to; nothing to do with regulation. If you really want to design green, you will find a great way. Regulatory framework is important; standards are fundamental. But it has to come from inside. People in their own way have got to find a reason why they want to create change. And once they get that, they’ll be off and running.

Kevin Hydes: It’s about changing mindsets. In Canada, for instance, the former Prime Minister introduced the “One-Tonne Challenge”. Every Canadian was asked, on a voluntary basis, to save one tonne per year out of the 15 tonnes that they were currently using. And it was an absolute disaster. The thing about voluntary methods is that they need multiple channels of publicity. Regulation needs no publicity. It’s just “Boom, it’s done!” But any voluntary mechanism needs media, training, briefings, advocacy and events like this to create awareness. At the end of the day, the most powerful thing that we have on this planet is the power of the individual, coupled with the power of the masses. And that’s not driven by ideology; it’s driven by self-belief.

Winston Churchill once said about the Americans: “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, until they have tried just about everything else.” So in the US (the government) didn’t want to accept climate change, they didn’t want to increase energy efficiency. Then all of a sudden, the people said: “We are going to get on and change it.” And they did. They didn’t want the government to regulate it. It’s a grassroots movement; it’s not driven by regulation.

If you’re an architect in Northern Europe, you’ll be out of business unless you actually practise green. And I’ll be shocked if every single architect in the world isn’t practising some level of green architecture within the next three years.

Thor Kerr: Is the term “sustainability” overused? Should we beware of greenwash?

Dr. Deo Prasad: I was in Shanghai not too long ago where I saw a huge sign on a tall building: “green development”. I happened to know the people who were involved in the process and they said it was just a marketing thing. They write “green” because they think it might fetch a premium price, but they had done nothing; it was greenwash altogether. I think greenwash is very common. If the green building council here is trying to get away from greenwash, education is one of the main focus areas. There are tools, such as the green building tools, that allow one to understand how green a building really is.

Thor Kerr: In Asia, can one move from a traditional sustainable lifestyle to a modern lifestyle, without losing the sustainability?

Amado De Jesus: There’s this impression that green building design is something new; actually, it means going back to the basics. I think this is the key element. We’ve lost our innocence, you might say. When we say green building, green architecture, it doesn’t mean forgetting the past, the old and going to the new, embracing high-tech. It really means appreciating what we have on hand.

Thor Kerr: From your experience (in the Philippines) is the number of developers requesting green buildings rising, flat or declining?

Miguel Guerrero: When clients come to us, we are the ones who suggest green. For the Philippine Science High School campus in Cebu, I said “I will give you a green school”; I was the one who threw in all the ideas, because from their point of view, they didn’t know. A part of our responsibility in the green architecture movement is to talk to the clients. It has to come from the architect because, as of now, people in general don’t really know much about green buildings.

Thor Kerr: What’s the fastest way to making a green building in Jakarta, given that the problems are so complex?

Ridwan Kamil: Green can be by the government, the private sector, and by us, the designers. The government should regulate and drive the green building movement but in the short run, we cannot wait for that to happen. That’s why in my firm, we make it a point that every project has to allocate the ground floor as public space. It’s a very simple contribution. We have done this in four to five buildings where we convinced the client to free up the front of the building for public space. If we have hundreds of buildings like that, in three, four years, you will have a city with a better environment.

Thor Kerr: At what stage of the design process did your firm start working on the zero energy building in Malaysia?

Poul Kristensen: From Day One. We want to be involved before the architect puts any design onto the drawing board because the most effective measures are those that are integrated in the very early design process. We have to look at things like orientation, shading, etc. In the zero energy building, our team has found that this climate is the best climate to make a very energy-efficient or zero emission building. We have very good possibilities to make very energy-efficient buildings by working with the climate, rather than trying to see it as only a constraint.

Thor Kerr: Does producing Green Mark buildings in Singapore increase construction cost and, if so, by what margin?

Lee Kut Cheng: At this stage, there is probably an increase of 2 to 3 percent in construction costs. But I think as more buildings have the same green building features, the cost is going to come down. In time to come, we’ll probably find that cost is no longer an issue.

Thor Kerr: I understand that some of the Green Mark residential buildings have sold out very quickly. Has that been your experience in Singapore?

Oh Lock Soon: Green Mark has caught the attention of both the buyers and investors. If you want to invest in a property, one that comes with this added long-term benefit will draw more attention than one that is less eco-friendly. Labelling or certification is a good way to educate consumers. This kind of labelling gives them a choice if they want to pay a little more for better products that can save them some money in the long run.

Thor Kerr: What should be the development of Thai law regarding the energy crisis?

Dr. Soontorn Boonyatikarn: We try to present to the government that they need to go further because their code is just too general; it is not strict enough to create an impact as far as green building concepts are concerned. We have to show them; we have to produce; we have to design; we have to write a book. And like what you said, sometimes we need a third party to do evaluation. In Thailand people are beginning to get some awareness of green design, and I think that goes beyond the code of regulations.

Thor Kerr: Should Thailand move in the direction of having a green building council?

Dr. Soontorn Boonyatikarn: Well, this is controversial. We have to understand that it is sensitive to talk about green in different locations. Green in Thailand and green in Hong Kong is totally different; because the latitude is different, the climate is different. For every 10-degree change in latitude, you need a major change in design. When you apply a Green label or Green concept, you have to make adjustments for each country. For instance, CASBEE may work very well for Japan,but when you apply it to Thailand, it may not be 100 percent suitable. It’s the same with Green Mark. We need to take the concept and make adjustments to the locality and latitude. This is the reason why I don’t believe in the code, but I believe in my own research. I may be too blunt to put it in that way but that’s my thinking.

Oh Lock Soon: In Singapore we have an effective tripartite effort between consumer groups, working with government agencies, and industry players, all coming together to form a platform for consumer rights, to give consumers a chance to learn about the green movement. A gathering of professionals can come up with ideas, talk to the government agencies, talk to the industrialists—everybody will listen because there is something in there for everyone, a kind of win-win situation for the three parties.

Thor Kerr: Ho Chi Minh City is in a very early stage of modern development compared to say cities like Bangkok or Singapore. But it looks like it’s going to make the same mistake that others have made in terms of relying too heavily on the motorcar. What has driven the promotion of the transport systems in other cities as well as the rights of the pedestrians and cyclists? What drives that change in other places in terms of transformation from motorcar to other modes of transportation?

Dr. Deo Prasad: There is research to suggest that if you do not provide transportation systems to match increase in demand, then people stop investing in private cars. There is a lot of work done in Japan that shows that if you don’t keep providing highways, the people limit their car numbers per household. So the answer is not to provide more highways. In Ho Chi Minh, for example, I think you have a window of about five years before all these motorbike owners turn, for economic reasons, to car ownership. If the road system stays as it is, you’re looking at a very disastrous situation. I would say that simply providing more highways is not the answer. I think the planning should head towards achieving a level of harmony between nature, people and movement. Transit systems, urban public transport systems, should be embedded now.

Dr. Nirmal Kishnani: To add to what Deo just said, Singapore has a two-prong strategy for dealing with transport and planning. First, you must have good infrastructure that works, that can cope with the demand. Second, you make private car ownership expensive; there are purchase taxes, road pricing, parking fees, etc., such that even if you can afford the car, you think hard about how frequently you use it. I suspect that one feeds the other; revenue from car ownership is used to reinforce the public transportation infrastructure.

Thor Kerr: Is there a standard criterion to assess the materials used for green building?

Dr. Nirmal Kishnani: Material selection is probably the most challenging question in greening. There are some very clear criteria, for example, recycled content, recyclability of materials. Often though, choosing a material becomes a question of trade-offs. We know that aluminium, for example, has high embodied energy, which means it takes a lot of energy to extract the raw materials to make the product, to get it onto site. But if you compare aluminium to a low embodied energy material, say timber, it’s still a tough call, especially in Southeast Asia where it’s hard to find tropical hardwoods from sustainable sources. So you choose between embodied energy and rainforest depletion. Which is the lesser evil? I’ve worked on many projects and we’ve often been stumped by a lack of information about where the materials are coming from; there is a lack of credibility in what people say about the products. This needs third party auditing, someone to check manufacturer claims and help designers make more informed judgement calls.

Thor Kerr: If you’re doing your first green building project in Vietnam, where would you start your research?

Dr. Nirmal Kishnani: The first rule is to use local materials where possible. This will reduce energy costs of bringing materials from afar. When it’s from your own backyard, you can then also investigate if production of the material has impacted the environment. In Vietnam, for instance, bamboo is a sustainable option. Bamboo grows rapidly and can be easily farmed and harvested.

Jalel Sager: As Dr Kishnani said, it’s a question of what’s available. And I think there have to be market transformations here to make the materials that we need available. We’re in a bit of a vicious cycle because the building industry says the products are not available; and then, the people in the raw materials’ sector say there is no demand. So you have to find some way to break that. And I also say that returning to the closed-loop system is in essence what has to happen, the mandate by which that happens. If your country is booming, you want nice things. However, I think, it is just as easy to set up something that’s clever and sustainable. This is a new century; I think it’s ready for those kinds of solutions.

(Jalel Sager is the Executive Director of the Vietnam Green Building Council)

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