Director of Broadway Malyan Singapore Jason Pomeroy shares his views on the “greening” of the urban landscape of the future, and on how real estate developers and city planners could go about designing green cities and buildings. Pomeroy is also responsible for some of the most innovative green projects in Southeast Asia, including the Sime Darby Idea House, which was completed in April 2010.
You are responsible for some of the most innovative green projects in Southeast Asia. Are there any that you are particularly proud of? I'm particularly proud of the Idea House. Sime Darby approached me two years ago to come up with a prototype dwelling that could represent the cutting edge in sustainable tropical living. Two years on, and we are in the midst of finalising the construction of the first carbon neutral house in Southeast Asia! This is pretty important insofar, as carbon is the major contributor to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which scientists argue have depleted the ozone and caused global warming.
What makes the Idea House unique? The essence of the house is one of a 'back-to-basics' approach to environmental design. This means looking at passive, low-tech design solutions that cause minimal disruption to the environment; has a low or negative carbon footprint and harvests renewable sources of energy/resource for the developments self-sustenance - sun, wind, rain.
The house is a reinterpretation of the traditional kampong house. It has a lightness of touch on the landscape, comprises low thermal mass materials, adopts rainwater harvesting with a 98 percent efficiency, integrates photovoltaic cells that generate enough energy to power the house for a family of five, harnesses cross ventilation, has deep overhanging roofs, utilises low energy appliances, incorporates recyclable materials and, ultimately, the appropriate orientation of the building to minimise solar heat gain. All of these attributes collectively contribute to creating a carbon zero footprint.
You are an advocate of sustainable tall building design, in which you gained your research degree from Cambridge. So, what constitutes sustainable tall buildings and what is the concept of vertical urbanism that you frequently discuss in your published works? I think it’s important to start off by saying that 'sustainable tall building’ is somewhat an oxymoron. Tall building development is not the panacea to our environmental or socio-economic woes - far be it, as they can be gas guzzling objects that are highly resource intensive, and have historically had their fair share of bad press in the way that they can be perceived as overt expressions of power and prestige.
However, they can similarly be a response to socio, economic and environmental pressures on our cities.
Since 2007, half the world's population have been living in inner city centres, and will continue to grow from 6 billion today to about 9.2 billion in 2050. With the increasing depletion of open space through high density urban development that caters for such inner city migration, we need to re-investigate the process of two dimensional land use planning in a more three dimensional way in order to cater for such social and economic growth. This means considering multiple layers of differing land use that are 'mixed up' and extruded in tower form.
This should be supported by the resplendent open spaces that one finds in the form of the street and the square on the ground, albeit reinterpreted vertically in the form of the sky court and garden in the sky. Such a balancing of vertical open space and vertical land use start to create a tall building that is not an isolated glass box but becomes an integral part of the vertical city.
Environmentally, the compact nature of high density mixed-use tall building reduces the need to travel to the peripheries in fossil fuel intensive cars and along high carbon footprint infrastructure, but should be able to maximise green transport linkages, like the LRT and subterranean concourses, as is the case in Singapore and Hong Kong.
The embracing of roof top gardens and vertical green eco-systems, not only reinforce the social attributes of living, working and playing at height, but also contribute to reducing the energy consumption of the buildings by keeping them cool, or even capturing rainwater.
Economically, an appropriate design that is responsive to the climatic conditions of the place also means that running costs of the building can be reduced. Orientating the building to minimise solar heat gain caused by low angle east and west sun, being able to use light thermal mass materials or the application of low energy appliances or low embodied energy materials collectively help reduce running costs.
Vertical Urbanism as a theory is therefore intrinsically linked to the sustainability of our global cities. The transition from 'sprawl-and-green to tall-and-green' means that the sustainable mixed-use tall building is a vertical extrapolation of the city, and as every year goes by, I am continually seeing the need for such a philosophy to embraced for a vibrant 24-hour city that can be enjoyed by our future generations.
What is your vision of cities in the future, especially in the Southeast Asia? Population increase and consequent inner city densification has led to considerable strain on the movement infrastructure and the increasing temperatures within the city centre. Building environment professionals need to take more fundamental steps to consider the decongestion of the city and the upgrading of the movement infrastructure in order to ensure that Southeast Asian city growth and freedom of passage for our future generations can be achieved.
This means due consideration given to LRT, monorail and underground systems that can provide an ease of mass transport. Consideration as to how to reduce energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuels is also important through the exploration of clean technologies such as wind, biomass, ground source heat pumps, or solar cell technology as alternative decentralised energy means. Greening the city by more public open parks and green roofs can also help reduce the heat island effect and create spaces that society can enjoy.
Sime Darby Idea House
Would becoming 'green' mean additional costs? Are real estate developers, especially in Malaysia, becoming more aware and willing to take on the additional costs? I think the days of astronomic costs at the inclusion of green technologies are a thing of the past. Once upon a time, we would identify a technology and connect it to a building or development, and hope that our carbon woes would go away. Such actions traditionally would see green developments costing 30 percent to 40 percent more than conventional developments purely because of the lack of co-ordination and interface between the building and the technology, and also a lack of integrated forward planning. Furthermore, the inappropriate use of green technologies that does not respond to the climatic conditions of place, for example, using wind turbine technology when there are very little wind speeds, would drive up costs.
Today however, I would like to think that built-environment professionals are far more joined-up in thinking, and there is an increasing drive to harvest the elements - sun, wind and rain - in a passive, 'low-tech' way that will not add to the bottom line. If we consider today that the cost of a Green Mark Platinum rated building, Singapore's equivalent to Malaysia's GBI green assessment method, maybe as little as 5 percent above conventional building costs, or even 3 percent for Gold, it certainly suggests that costs have come down drastically.
What we need to remember also is not what the additional costs are, but what the positive gains are too. Given increasing corporate social responsibility policies, the rise of the green consumer and our broader global society are waking up to the 'inconvenient truth' of climate change. The embracing of green buildings has become a necessity but at the same time has economic benefits. Green buildings see an increase in tenant retention of 7 percent, re-sale value increase of 10 percent and tenant rental increase of 10 percent.
It is therefore little surprise that the commitment to creating green buildings in 2005 of USD10 billion is set to rise to USD60 billion in 2010 in the space of five years! As Asia is the fastest growing green building market, it seems imperative that Malaysia embraces the trend for both its environmental and economic benefits.
Are there sufficient guidelines for the real estate industry to take up the sustainable approach? I think there is still work to be done, but it is a move in the right direction. The Earth/Climate Change summits in Rio, Kyoto, and then most recently Copenhagen last December have all tried to create a united global voice against climate change. Some countries have set bold carbon emission targets which should be encouraged for the betterment of the environment and our future generations.
The UK government have advocated that all new homes will need to be carbon neutral by 2016, with public facilities joining suit in 2019. I'd be delighted to see such commitments being embraced on a global scale, and particularly in Asia, given the fact that 50 percent of global carbon emissions will be from developing Asian countries by 2050. In order for this to happen, legislation needs to be passed. Though, incentives may also need to be in place at the outset to encourage such a move by the real estate industry.
What are the benefits of adopting green practices in the long run? Everyone can benefit by going green. Companies leasing green buildings have lower energy bills and have better working environments that can improve employee productivity. Developers building green buildings satisfy their corporate social responsibilities, can maximise planning opportunities and even sell their buildings at a premium. Green consumers living or playing in green buildings have a heightened sense of enjoyment and community belonging.
Governments supporting green buildings get re-elected in their embracing of the climate change agenda in the interests of securing a sustainable future for our children.
Going green isn't a short term thing, and needs to be considered long term to maximise the social, economic and environmental benefits. Just as one does not invest in a stock with the view to immediate selling the next day, so too should we be considering sustainability for the long term. If we don't, the economic and environmental consequences will be catastrophic for our children.
