China’s Need for LEED
In a country where new buildings go up almost daily, sustainability seems to be little more than a buzzword. But urban planners are making strategic steps toward making cities more ecologically friendly, giving China’s architects the opportunity to design unique, innovative structures that reduce environmental impact and enhance quality of life.
In addition to a booming construction industry that is predicted to comprise half of the world’s new buildings by 2015, China also currently holds the title as the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases – two reasons why the need for ‘green’ buildings has become a priority in the Middle Kingdom. Growing environmental awareness is prompting a progressive group of Chinese developers and architects to undertake a number of sustainable building projects. They are working to prove their 'green’ and energy-efficient credentials by pursuing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification – an internationally recognised rating system developed in the US to evaluate the environmental performance of a structure.
While China erected its first ‘green’ building in 2001, only five buildings were LEED-certified by 2006. However, China now has more than 80 million square feet of LEED-certified buildings according to the US Green Building Council. While these numbers are small compared with the overall number of buildings being constructed, doing little to lessen environmental strain on their own, they are indicative of an increasing demand for ecologically friendly design.
“We learnt that there is a growing desire from the public, that they would like to see more sustainable design, green architecture and conservation,” says Bernard Lim. As Principal of the Architecture Design and Research Group Ltd. (AD+RG), Lim has extensive experience in designing and executing numerous award-winning building projects in Hong Kong and Mainland China.
While Lim uses his unique expertise to research and integrate environmental architecture, he asserts that the development of the ‘green’ building market is still heavily reliant on public awareness. “There is firstly a strong need to educate the public [about sustainability] in China because unless people consider it important, developers will not bother and the government won’t feel the need to establish environmental regulations.”
He indicates that seemingly small details such as disposition, natural lighting, ventilation systems, use of local materials and energy-efficient technologies can make a greater difference in the sustainability of a building. For example, during the design of the B&P International Education Park in Beijing, Lim incorporated circular courtyards within the separate building modules. Inspired by the designs of local indigenous villages, the circular courtyards have proven to be an effective means of retaining heat energy and insulating the building facilities.
Nabil Sabet, a LEED Accredited Professional at M Moser Shanghai, notes, “As the world’s energy crisis grows in severity the need for sustainability will become more and more accepted. It is then the duty of investors and government to respond to the demand.” M Moser is a corporate space design firm based in Hong Kong that is at the forefront of sustainable practice.
The challenge in designing for sustainability, however, is the highly disputed cost of installation, even among the industry’s proponents. While Sabet argues that there is a “misconception that sustainable design costs a fortune”, noting that implementation typically only incurs a 5 to 10 per cent addition to typical construction costs, Lim asserts that the initial expenditure on ‘green’ installations is “very expensive”. While there is obvious disagreement concerning preliminary costs, especially because it depends on the standard of the measures undertaken, both agree that the payback is worth the initial cost.
Other industry leaders, like Raefer Wallis, co-founder of A00 Architecture, have a completely different approach. “The most important factor is to abandon sustainability as a goal. It has a miserable level of acceptability,” he says. “We need to be addressing issues of regeneration instead.” A00 is widely known for its research into environmental sustainability and its application to architecture, interiors, and furniture. However instead of coming up with solutions that reduce environmental impact, it has pioneered ways in which construction can be an environmentally positive human activity as opposed to a negative one.
A00 recently did a conceptual design for a hotel in Shanghai where the roofs reinstated the wetlands once indigenous to Shanghai. The design for the multi-story building – which has not actually been approved for construction – allows for a greater total green footprint for the area with the building than without it, serving as a wetland park in the city, while also providing a habitat for migrating birds and a natural system for cleaning water. The goal of the building design is to use affordable technology to create wastewater that is cleaner than the incoming water so that the longer the project operates, the better it is for the environment.
Most buildings that have actually reached the construction stage do not implement such far-reaching principles as A00’s ambitious design, but they enable the progressive integration of ‘green’ spaces. So by steadily allowing environmental consciousness to proliferate China, the country’s structural designs may just as soon embrace a regenerative future.
