Feeling The Cool Breeze

Today India is arguably the Asian nation most enthusiastic about using old technology to find new energy savings. In some sense the green-building tradition goes back to Mahatma Gandhi, who once built his own house from wattle (woven wooden strands) and daub (a mixture of earth, cattle dung and straw). Inspired by that simple esthetic, visionary British-born architect Laurie Baker, a naturalized Indian who first landed in 1945, designed structures that could be built affordably from local materials, with scooped roofs and perforated walls to capture breezes. "The trend in India in the 1960s and 1970s was climate-sensitive, naturally cooled and very local," says Abhin Alimchandani, director of architecture at STUP consultants in Mumbai, a prominent green designer. "Those buildings would [score] very well under the LEED system."

Since 2003, some 30 Indian projects have won LEED certification, according to the Indian Green Building Council. They include India's first green airport, now nearing completion in Hyderabad, as well as prominent corporate headquarters in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and a city-size special economic zone called Blue Ridge in Pune. "Five times as many are now in the pipeline," says Alimchandani, and by 2010 the council hopes to have a thousand green projects underway nationwide. "There is a huge requirement for LEED-accredited professionals," IGBC chairman Prem C. Jain told the Deccan Herald in September. "In fact, we need an army to overlook the commissioning, simulation and operations of these buildings."

Singapore's most ambitious green project stands out for targeting the mass market. Called Eco Precinct, the 712-unit residential complex incorporates ecofriendly innovations into affordable, efficient flats more notable for their underlying design logic than for high-tech wizardry. "It is not our mandate to do cutting-edge," says Johnny Wong of the city's Housing Development Board unapologetically. Instead, Eco Precinct gets the basics right. Solar heat is absorbed on insulated "cool walls," green roofs and a tree-shaded Eco-Deck that covers the car park. Windows face the north-south axis to avoid morning or evening glare, while the thin towers maximize air flow-through. Solar cells power lights in common areas and the capture of rainwater irrigates dense landscaping that could cut outside temperatures at the complex by up to four degrees Celsius. The project is already 80 percent sold and represents about a third of all public housing to be built in the city-state in 2009.

Eco Precinct is a case study in adapting to local conditions. Its flats aren't double-glazed, tightly sealed units like those favored in colder climes, because in the tropics this type of design tends to encourage air-conditioning use. The project's green roof was another area of focus. Plant and soil mixes favored in temperate climates would require irrigation and could breed deadly mosquitoes, HDB experiments concluded. So experts at the National University of Singapore and the city's parks service were called upon to select appropriate plants. And instead of soil, pebble-size ceramic shards keep roots from rotting and water from pooling. Eco Precinct will cost 5 to 8 percent more to build than conventional public housing, says Wong, and it's "too early to tell how much energy we will save."

The challenge ahead—for Asia and the world—is to move beyond the green-building beachhead by making key elements in today's experimental buildings tomorrow's norm. The trends are encouraging. The number of projects seeing green certifications (by LEED and others) is increasing virtually everywhere, albeit from a low baseline; leading corporations see the PR advantage to having LEED-certified headquarters, and developers are discovering that resource-efficient buildings command premiums on the market (for sale or lease) that outweigh additional building costs. Perhaps the best barometer is that the cost of noncompliance is rising. "New non-green buildings face early obsolescence," forecasts Wall.

More important to the big picture, governments are reviewing outdated building codes in light of the impact green buildings have on climate change. Hong Kong's top leader hinted in his recent annual policy address that tougher efficiency standards are on the way. Singapore has declared its lowest Green Mark certification the minimum standard for all new construction. And this month China sent a delegation from the powerful construction ministry to the USGBC's annual Green Build convention in Chicago, where members presented a rating and certification system under development in Beijing as part of a strategy to reduce energy use and carbon emissions in 2010 to 1990 levels. "This could get beyond the handful of sample projects," says Hainline. "With China's goal of becoming a world leader they have the ability to make things happen not only by reversing their own environmental path but by setting the example for others."