BCI Asia Top Ten Architects 2008

Recipients of this year’s BCI Asia Top Ten Awards will enjoy an opportunity to learn more about sustainability from experts on green building at FuturArc Forum 2008, to be held in eight cities between 19 February and 8 April 2008. The BCI Asia awards are bestowed each year to the 10 most active architectural firms in Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

BCI Asia, the publisher of FuturArc, aims to improve built environments by assembling the principals of Top Ten firms with green-building academics and practitioners from around the world as well as representatives of large property development companies, engineering firms and building technology providers. Besides participating in a discourse on green building, they will attend exclusive Top Ten Awards dinners during or immediately after each respective FuturArc Forum.

Several firms in this year’s Top Ten list are already developing a competency in green building such as Surbana International Consultants Pte Ltd of Singapore with its Green Mark Platinum rated Treelodge @ Punggol project as well as Wong & Ouyang (HK) Ltd with its design for University of Hong Kong Centennial Campus. Green building may still be in its infancy, but there has been a great leap in environmental awareness among local design professionals since early 2006 when BCI Asia Chairman Dr. Matthias Krups first called on architects to play a leadership role in designing sustainable buildings.

“The only way for Asia—and the world—to survive urban development on such a scale is to focus on sustainability,” Dr Krups said in his welcome address at the Top Ten Awards ceremonies in 2006. “Let us celebrate the remarkable accomplishments and the great responsibilities of the leading ten architectural firms.”

In collecting data on this year’s Top Ten, BCI Asia conducted about 300,000 interviews with architects, developers, engineers and contractors. Its research staff also followed tenders, visited sites and reviewed municipal records to ensure accuracy. The Top Ten winners had the highest accumulated value of active projects in their portfolios reported in BCI Asia’s e-bulletin/Leadmanager service in the year to September 2007. Active projects were either reported for the first time at design or documentation stages in the year to 30 September 2007; or updated to tender, post tender or construction stages during this annual period from design or documentation stages in the previous annual reporting period. Projects were excluded if they were abandoned or deferred.