And we don’t need to wait for a zombie apocalypse, it is already here when you just can’t miss the sight of anyone nodding down their head and just so glued to the few inch of screen rather on what’s happening around them. Nevertheless, the fear is not only on how so many of us would be so glued up to the virtual communication when we are with so many friends around, but what fears the most is how virtual communication has changed our perceptions on real world communication, in which, yes it is like zombies talking.

Yes it is very easy to give LIKE on Facebook. The virtual world, internet has given a lot of great opportunities, but a lot of easy way out for many individuals. It’s very easy for them to rant and say all they want and hitting around the bushes with the different perception of likes and internet language, and most of them don’t come to a point of thinking How can they take action in the real world to the relevancy of the issues we have today.

It’s good that a lot of people have been utilizing social media to grab crowd attention and mobilize movements, but on the other hand, that also means some just support ‘virtually’ as well.

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But at some instance, what stirs in my thought is that there’s a need for a paradigm shift to study how these tools have underrated the benefits of integration with living things into the building. There are nothing wrong with tools defining high energy performance building (which is good) but there’s a lack of acknowledging living things integrated design, where there should be a deeper understanding that landscape does more than being a visual pleasure element.

THE 21st CENTURY MODERN GREEN DESIGN

I am not against of the current impressive buildings that gives a clear attention to be more environmental friendly design.. the principles are obvious, harvesting daylight to achieve lower consumption on artificial lighting, implementing best passive design to minimize heat gain and thus reducing the need of mechanical ventilation such as air cond etc.. and some green areas. Totally impressive and good. I have always loved Guz Architects designs, where most of their projects undertake high end residential in Singapore.

But as much as all these designs are impressive and seems to be very nature associated, they are very rigid and man made it seems, that does not reflect what the nature really have to offer. Various green building tools emphasize on the size/volume of landscape but do not really push landscape architects to go beyond form and scale design of landscapes by promoting edible landscape and the the various studies of occupant nature encounter experience. Ken Yeang’s approach to architecture has ramifications for the well being and quality of life of users, which are among the most important architectural considerations today. Landscape certainly associates with biodiversity and ecosystems integration.

Take Two: which one is more environmental cautious design?

THE 21st CENTURY PROBLEM

This is the problem we are facing. As much as we are keen in improving and promoting low carbon footprint lifestyle through buildings, but often these fail when the occupants do not understand and appreciate nature in the first place. We have a lot of buildings with nature deficit order design today. As much as how we would want to engineer a building to bring occupants closer to mother nature, this contradicts itself when any development would need to clear off a land and chop off all the trees and require to bring in another tree from several miles away to plant there. Where’s the design with nature principle that encourages us to blend into the nature instead of modifying it?

The video above shows how one could appreciate nature through the daily routine and how does one interact with nature through various senses. We can have a wide area of nice planted turf and shrubs, but that does not reflect what landscape diversity is about. We can have a swimming pool to swim in, but that does not reflect the feeling of stepping into the sand in the lake.. if you ask any cave man, they would rather name our modern tropical gren homes as a superstitious design. hah!

This is crucial as most new generation today are born in big cities with hardly any virgin forest around to excite them what a nature is truly like. It’s not only the young but anyone will feel that a liveable city space is one with many parks and gardens with various biodiversity incorporated. Recent research in neuroscience and endocrinology clearly demonstrates that experiencing nature has significant benefits, both psychological and physiological. Bringing nature and references to nature into the built environment is the purpose of biophilic design.

Good landscape design is one with a variety of species and ability to attract biodiversity rather than a piece of vertical landscape purely for aesthetic purpose.

DEFINING BIOPHILIC DESIGN

Biophilia describes “the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.”  It also proposes he possibility that the deep affiliations humans have with nature are rooted in our biology. A good biophilic design is one which encourages biophilia rather than biophobia. Philias are the attractions and positive feelings that people have toward certain habitats, activities, and objects in their natural surroundings. Biophilic design is one where it integrates the nature into our built environment.

In our urban context, nature is commonly defined by parks or gardens, but weather and animals are closely involved and a good biophilic design is one which incorporates these elements. The core of biophilic building design again is to bridge the gap between human beings and nature. Well, it could really sound like as if building a farm! These are the 5 design approaches to a biophilic design from my point of view.

1. BIOMIMICRY FINISHES

Well it simply means finishes that looks like natural elements.. Be it wooden finishes, or bare concrete finishes.. it’s nice to have textures or visual of the natural elements. Bamboo is quite widely used due to its flexibility thus able to be done in many ways. There are also a lot of choices from the laminated wood which can be done flooring or panels..

But yes these are the easier approach but also obstacle can be a lot in the real practise such as not all woods are FSC certified, meaning harvested from sustainable wood harvesting forest practices.. or perhaps not all comply building codes, fire safety code.. or it’s hard to apply for building insurance. But biomimicry does not only need to come in finishes, it can come in forms too.

And the idea again, is infinity. From the tree root inspired staircases, to beehive furniture, to the many possible shape of different scales, from furniture to building that gives people a distinctive image of the natural form. While some always associate this as expensive due to designer products, well, it certainly doesn’t always need to be when you can DIY it easily too.

2. GREEN & BLUE

Simply means Landscape and Water elements. I would say this is quite a standard practise of well living residential design.. where you have internal courtyard.. or koi pond.. or just a still water table or swimming pool. This is quite a significant element in energy performance design too to reduce the urban heat island effect and simply a visual comfort perspective.
But again the significance is here where you place them and how well again you integrate them inside and outside your home, in such a way that user will experience contact in nature any possible angle available. It’s very easy to have nice garden outside but that’s totally detached once you entered your super modern superstitious alienate interior design. So a good distribution of design such as internal courtyard and planter boxes along facade and rooftop, and interior fountain certainly completes it. Well, perhaps also a vertical herb kitchen in your dry kitchen.

3. DAYLIGHT & OPENESS

Again this is the very fundamental of biophilic design when one needs to get in touch with the outside world, to be able to relate the weather with their routine. A clear bad example would be most modern shopping mall with so much of artificial lighting and almost no sight to the outdoor that made it so detached from the nature. Daylight is already proven to help people in ergonomics and economical term a lot.

You would be surprise how some people love the glare in the morning, shining in into their beds and waking them up. Certainly no artificial lighting can match with the benefit of natural daylight. People can relate to nature pretty much with the intensity of direct or diffuse sun light they get as the seasons rotate.. or even the tone of the color.. The same goes to the surroundings, and texture and personality of the landscape as seasons pass by.

4. LIVING THINGS

So you have a built environment that relates much to the natural elements, now you are lacking of the next component of nature, living things! Directly it means get a pet! or even having your own life stocks. Be it the mainstream home pets such as fish, cats, dogs, or your life stocks, these things bring your living space to life as your houses are now closer to the nature as it embraces other living things as well. And again it depends how often do you encounter them! The noisier the better perhaps? 

5. ACTIVITIES

But nevertheless again, if you have animals, then it’s activities with them that ultimately draw you closer to nature. Biophilic design is a design which teaches anyone to experience on their own journey with the nature and able to define the significance of it. I mean personally for me i do find inspiration out of lying on the patch of grass and just simply playing with the cats. It seems to be some unintended communication that does improve our human beings. So yes be it any creatures you have at home or nearby, do some engagement

But again activities to get close to nature doesn’t really need animals, the easiest and most common of all is edible landscape, or planting in general. It is very easy for anyone today to eat food they claim it is from the soil but not truly aware how did they come from. Edible landscape is one simple activity anyone can have within their plot of land or just some planter box and just experience from the very moment you throw the seed and the moment you consume its final vegetation product. It’s again one of the best activity how one can relate to the nature better =)

A MALAYSIAN BIOPHILIC DESIGN long Existed…

Actually needless to say, biophilic prototypes in Malaysia are long founded, the best practise is the Malaysia traditional Kampung House. There are various environmental elements incorporate into the design of the elevated wooden house, be it life cycle analysis or its capability of being expanded or migrated, the malay traditional house is a good example of biophilic design as most of the time it is situated along the tropical rain forest setting and they are accompanied by their life stocks such as poultries or mammals.

CHALLENGES to go for Biophilic design in Urban Setting

On the other hand, in a built environment condition in the city center, the challenges to go for biophilic design is huge. Major obstacles come from the existing law. It seems that many laws, such as the fire code, building code and Uniform Building by Law, can restrict a creative design of dwelling a lot, including a biophilic home. Well, i won’t go into details but i don’t think anyone can have a few poultry or mammals in a bungalow lot.. or many other possible things. but i am saying of course it is possible!

UNDERESTIMATION to go for Biophilic Design

And of course asides from building codes, the underestimation on the benefits of biophilic design is one major factor. A lot of developers again look into short term profit making and do not look into long term benefits to the building occupants, and this can only change when the building occupants put this on demand and change the trend setting, or perhaps there’s some legislation/building code measures to put this right. There are numerous studies done on the benefit on biophilic design, in which again many can claim skeptical of these intangible measures as they don’t represent short term monetary in return..

Numbers are rounded to nearest whole. 1: Ohtsuka, 1998. 2: Wolf, 2005. 3: Machlin & Carper, 2007. 4: Heerwagen, 2006. 5: Heschong, 2003; Loftness, 2008.

And of course, the general public in Malaysia is still not well aware of their built environment comfort level such as indoor air quality and the other aspects of the current green building efforts. These are slowly done with the prototype example awareness by some developers such as Sime Darby IdeaHouse or Panasonic Econation.

Well, only time will tell when does the architecture awareness of biophilic design will be paving its way into Malaysia… What say you? Singapore already has its skyrise greenery awards & numerous incentives from the government & expert think tank researchers into this issue..National Parks Board has introduced the Skyrise Greenery Incentive Scheme (SGIS). Under the Scheme, NParks will fund up to 50% of installation costs of green roofs and vertical greenery. Well that’s certainly a lot of benefit when it’s only 75Sgd/meter square of green roof. Cheap!  I cannot think any initiative for Malaysia for now though..

Disclaimer:  *Pictures are Googled Images.* 

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A day full of Speed Bumps makes you Hump.

So let’s be frank, Speed Bumps are annoying. And personally i think it gives more trouble rather than a solution.  Speed bump functions as a traffic calming feature of road design used to slow traffic. It prevents cars from speeding unnecessary for the safety of pedestrians and helping to reduce speeding which assumes to lessen the noise pollution too within neighbourhood.

Talking about Town Planning, or more specifically traffic planning, traffic calming features (there are several types, the most common in Malaysia is speed bump) , is one of the crucial planning element, in which to my assumption, from my observation of road bumps placement around Petaling Jaya, local authority should know better of how the placements of bumps affect the overall traffic by contributing to travelling time. This is a chart i spotted from Portland’s Bureau of Transportation, kind of assist you to understand the decision factor for placing bumps.

As much as i acknowledge the reason of this “sleeping police” but the disadvantages of speed bumps can be severe too:

• Slow and hazardous response time of Emergency Vehicle. In terms of affecting emergency services, the London ambulance service estimates that 500 lives are lost each year due to increased response time associated with traffic calming.
• Increase noise by both traversing over the bumps and by using more engine revs.
• Inappropriate design may cause damage to vehicles and its passengers, In Situ Speed Bumps often tear off easily.
• Lack of Maintenance and Poor visual indication is dangerous to users. Most commonly happen in Malaysia, a lot of local authorities simply just In Situ a speed bump a specific place without any reflective strips or paint on it, how would motorist know about it?
• Improper design / too many speed bumps annoy passengers on travelling time.
• If it’s really time consuming, may divert traffic to parallel residential streets. Refer to the study done in Portland that drivers prefer going to alternative route after the speed bump is installed, suggesting time consuming over road bumps as unfriendly.

The Polluter instead!

Speed Bump causes Pollution too. Solid road humps cause a significant increase in air and noise pollution. A Transport Research Laboratory study conducted emissions tests on roads with a 75 metre road hump spacing. This found that the ‘stop/start’ pattern of driving:

• Increased Hydrocarbons emissions by 70%-100%.
• Increased CO2 emissions by 50-60%
• Increased CO emissions by 70-80%.

So here comes an innovative solution, still in research though and not commercially available i suppose. The idea of energy generative through kinetic motion has been long started since the industrial age, this includes energy generating shoes or energy generating dancing platform, and now here it is.

Power Generating Speed Bump ,Motion Power, developed by New Energy Technologies (US Company) that can harvest energy from speed bumps. It obtains the kinetic energy that occurs when automobiles slow down or stop at speed bumps. However the product is still at research phase because of the insufficient amount of energy that can be secured compared to the installation cost. MotionPower™ is best suited for high traffic locations where vehicles are already slowing down. Example installation sites include toll plazas, rest stops, highway off-ramps, truck depots, and traffic calming zones. There are 3 type of products, namely Express, Auto, & Heavy, each serving different type of vehicles. For more info, Visit their website HERE

 How it functions

It consists of a series of panels set in a pad virtually flush to the road. As the traffic passes over it, the panels go up and down, setting a cog in motion under the road. This then turns a motor, which produces mechanical energy. A steady stream of traffic passing over the bump can generate 10-36kW of power.

The ramps cost between £20,000 and £55,000, depending on size. The bumps can each produce between £1 and £3.60 of energy an hour for up to 16 hours a day, or between £5,840 and £21,024 a year. Energy not used immediately can be stored or fed into the national grid.

Energy Output and Applications

The electricity energy harvested is estimated 100kWh for 10 thousand cars going through, which does not suggest a lot but it can power up devices nearby such lighting, roadway signage, checkout counters or even LED lights embedded into the road bumps.

Yes i know you wonder, how much energy harvested actually? As extracted from Motion Power’s Website, the potential electrical energy production.

 So there it is, does it sound new to you? Not for me as i am already expecting several other applications in the research phase too, the concept is relatively easy to understand about, translating kinetic energy into electricity and store it. Anyways but i sincerely doubt this will be applicable in Malaysia, the cost for now is just too high and takes too long to be recovered i suppose. Nevertheless, it makes you think what other related applications can be done

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Typical Office Design with Low Depth to Ceiling Ratio that requires Artificial Lighting.

Aesthetics? Power? Watts? 

But based on my observation in Malaysia, most lighting experts pay more attention to the aesthetics of lighting than how it actually affects the users. Most of them will study the lighting color temperature, most of the end users question the common note,  ”Is it bright enough?” but rather seeking what is the appropriate brightness.

Many of us seek for the information of power or Watts to justify the electricity consumption of the light bulb but rather knowing much on the amount of brightness, LUX it produces. Typically there is a misconception that more Watts will produce more Brightness, and thus means better.

Brighter Days Brighter Mood?

Not exactly, In contrast to the assumption made, it is known that brighter lighting, is in fact NOT desired by most workers. Providing too much light can lead to the wastage of electricity/energy, and also ultimately affects occupants emotional and physical discomfort, due to improper illumination of the work station, or perhaps cases of glare.

A typical Philips CFL

Flux, Illuminance and Luminance

To justify this scenario at a quantify manner, total flux, in lumens, is the parameter of the bulb manufacturers use when describing the total amount of light given off by a bulb in all directions. However, that does not tell us how much light will be received where it is needed. Illuminance, on the other hand, tells us how much light will reach a given surface. Illuminance is generally measured in lux, which is a short form of lumens per square meter of surface area, the metric equivalent of footcandles. There are 10.00lux in one footcandle typically.

The total flux doesn’t specify how much illuminance will be provided when it is needed, this can be due to the design of the reflectors, lenses and other optical media that could affect the flow of the light from the source to the work surface. The example on the Left shows a CFL bulb producing 55lm per watt, with the total power of 11W, thus producing 610lumen. But that does not reflect on how much illuminance it provides.

The table below shows the recommended LUX Level for various workspace activities.

Typical Ceiling Lights defeat the purpose of healthy illumination as more often the ambient office lighting can go up to 500 when only 100 is needed, far more light than is necessary for getting around the office. A personal experience of mine tells me that having work in an office space which uses ceiling lights all day could really deteriorate your health, having a constant illuminance of 500 during the day time and having even a greater contrast when the skyline turns dark will make you feel lethargic easily.

Monitor Glare

Having ambient lighting level as high as 500 lux to read printed documents is fine, but not when it is additional to the illuminance gave out from the monitors. The suitable lighting intensity for proper monitor viewing is 50-100 lux. Anything beyond it will lead to glare on the surface of the monitor, substantial energy waste and a variety of worker productivity issues. The only solution is to lower the overall ambient lighting levels and provide individuals with positionable task lights.

TASK LIGHTING- The Ergonomic and Economic Winner

It is irrefutably true to say that combined ambient task lighting is the most effective solution in any environment in which workers are doing both paper work and computer work. Research shows that this concept is supported by human factors and also driven by demand for energy savings. The main key to lighting office space to accomodate individual preference is to take off conventional grid ceiling lighting, but rather design zones that incorporate sensors, either wise, PSALI aka Permanent Supplementary Artificial Lighting Interiors is another concept to suggest with. But the focus here is about task lighting with the assumption of sufficient surrounding ambient lighting 100-200lux.

Task Lighting Saves Eyes

Ergonomic is defined as a scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, in short, the science of making things comfortable or productive. Positionable Task lighting is extremely flexible and considerably more effective means of lighting a working station than typical overhead fixtures, which can be costly and inefficient.

“The most common design error, clearly, is the mismatch between where light is being delivered and where people are utilizing that light” Alan Hedge.

They can be directed to light documents or moved to avoid screen glare, and everything is within the convenience and comfort of the occupant rather than a fixed, helpless ceiling down light. Eyestrain is the major issue for most typical office open layout with massive ceiling down lights, and that can affect performance of work, it’s a work hazard, that bad.

Task Lighting Saves Energy

The whole concept of task lighting is again, that you only need to light up where you need it to be. A task light using a 26 watt compact fluorescent lamp will consume far less energy as illustrated at the table below. Furthermore by having lower energy consumption operating lamp, you could save air conditioning energy as you have reduced the overall heat gain much more effectively too.

“Comparative analyses indicate significant energy and cost savings through separation of ambient and task lighting system, as high as 60 percent for energy and almost 50 percent for life cycle cost” Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2003 Study 

To sum it all up, the following is a video documented by IEN consultant on an energy efficient task lighting. Well it’s a rather cute LED Tasklight available from IKEA! Hope the illustration helps.

It is said that the rule of thumb of recommended illuminance around the monitor display should be at least one third of the monitor brightness.

This is my office desk with approximately around 150 lux. Good enough for a laptop work, but if i would need extra light to assist me in some paper reading, then i could just adjust the blinds beside me to let daylight fill in which could increase the lux to 220. We should always consider available daylight source before thinking of using artificial lighting.  In which, more about it will be described here.

Harvesting the free and healthy light – DAYLIGHTING

We see that the task lighting strategy can be applied to almost any work place in the world, but Malaysia, as a tropical country, certainly we have much more to offer when we have so much free day light all year round. It was mentioned just now on the ambient surrounding lighting created by the artificial ceiling lights, but in here we want to push the limits to use day light to light up as many floor space as possible. It is a common sense and practical strategy to harvest daylight and rain water in any tropical climate country.

There was a daylight survey results carried out among 569 office building occupants in Manila, Philippines. Seems that most of them prefer equal distribution of daylight and electrical light, but the second percentile states clearly that there’s an interest on daylight itself.

Understanding Spectrums

While it was discussed just now that too much lighting, or glare could affect one’s performance in work, here we talk about how much a daylight could help you. Daylight is ultimately essential for any human beings, or living things, and artificial lighting should not be taken as a substitute to it.

This issue is widely concern for certain groups such as Navys or Astronauts on Spacecrafts that are commonly away from the daylight/sunlight for few days, and the type of unnatural lighting has influence on the depressive behaviour such as lack of energy, increased appetite, irritability, also known as SAD Seasonal Affective Disorder.

The whole reason behind this is that artificial lighting does not resemble the full spectrum of day lighting.  Light is invisible, that’s why we take it for granted, but when you look behind the curtain of white light and see all the colors of the spectrum, you suddenly realize: white is not = white.” Margit Brusda, Co Founder VivaLite

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Other Benefits

Daylight does not flicker; fluorescent lights can have a noticeable flicker. People blame this for a multitude of
problems like headache, eye strain and attention deficit problems. Fluorescent lights than run on electronic
ballasts have considerably reduced flicker problems, but only daylight guarantees a total absence of flicker.

The inherent variability of daylight as clouds move through the sky, successively obscuring and revealing the
sun. Some studies have shown that this variability of daylight has relaxing effect on the eyes (Sze-Hui Au,
Leony (1999)

On the other hand, luminous efficacy is a measure of how well a light source produces visible light in comparison with its electricity demand. Daylight is known to be cool, desirable and green of course, in tropical climate, note that we refer to day light rather than harvesting direct sunshine, which is a disturbing glare to many,

A Simple yet Precise Design

Designing a building or facade to capture day lighting can be quite easy but to really know if it is performing relatively suitable for the occupant or environment, quantitative studies or simulations have to be done to prove it right. Generally day lighting design strategies in the tropics covers 4 rules:

Control Solar Heat Gain - Capturing Daylight means having Openings at your facade, but having too much openings, that will increase your Window to Wall Ratio, thus increasing possible heat gains too, causing more heat entering through the fenestration that heats up the building, increase electricity cost to cool down the building, generally.

Control Glare from Clear Sky and Direct Sun – Daylighting means absorbing diffused light from the North and South Facade in general, not the direct sunshine that glares through the West and East facades. However, having a good facade shading strategy will help.

Make a Daylight factor more uniform - Generally it’s best to design space according to the availability of daylight that could hit a minimum 1% of daylight factor, uniformly distrubuted along the openings.

Increase Daylight factor deep in building - This comes with the extra innovation on how to catch day light even further into the building. Typical opening fenestration can deliver light into a depth of 5meters with 1% Daylight factor, but however with new channeling of the day lights, we can achieve as deep as 7 or 8meters! Illustration as shown:

However the point is that we need not to go into that technical or deep to study on how to deliver day light into that deep yet, the facade itself has many strategies to play with to study on how to “bounce” the light rays into deeper part of the room. Following is a study of the facade of ST Diamond Building, where light shelf and  window sill bounce the light further deeper into the room. This looks simple but studies need to be done for different buildings as it depends on your micro climate, ceiling height, etc.

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The building is 50% daylit. The façade daylighting system consists of a mirror lightshelf and a white painted window sill. Both deflect daylight onto the white ceiling for improved daylight distribution until 5 meters from the façade + 2 additional meters of corridor space. Installed office lighting is 8.4 W/m2, but 1-year measurements show consumption of only 4 W/m2 showing 50% reliance on daylighting

The Ultimate Combination –  DAYLIGHT responsive lighting + TASK LIGHTING

With the mention of both lighting strategy, here comes to a conclusion on how both can be incorporated to an efficient and effective workplace lighting solution.

Case Study: Green Energy Office, Bangi

GEO Building is a research building and also a research project for Green Tech Malaysia. It was taken into use in November2007 and at present the Energy Index is 35kw/metersquareyear, or just 15% of the typical office building.

This is what it looks like without ANY lights on! IF you have mistaken the down ceiling light is on, that is actually the day lighting openings from the rooftop. Probably being the best example of daylight design, the building’s electric lighting only needs to be on 5% of the time of working hour. Following is a LUX/brightness study of the working space.

There is no artificial lighting require at all as you can see, however when it comes to event of gloomy weather or insufficient daylight, the efficient mechanical lighting, T5 lighting kicks into supplying lighting. And all of these are regulated by censors, and lighting zones are designed too as an even more sophisticated method to save electricity and controlling equality of brightness throughout the open space.

This is the light levels measured in GEO early this year. 

As it was seen, the staffs are absolutely all right with generally low ambient lighting level but by using the 6.2 watt LED task light which gives a suitable 700+ lux of brightness to read materials. I personally have been there too and just notice that some staffs really appreciate their LED task lights because it offers them flexibility and contrast in sight brightness from time to time, instead of a typical office design with constant 300-500 lux everywhere, and that’s not encouraging!

Conclusion

It is proven that Daylight helps much more compared to Artificial Lighting, as perhaps for some of us we tend to evaluate monetary more and saying that designing a building with daylighting is too expensive, why not just layout ceiling lights? That is obviously ethically wrong as you are not only wasting energy/electricity in the long term, but there are substantially money sacrificed from all the health problems too eventually.

Daylight helps a lot if glare and heat is controlled! Supplementary Lights and Daylight indeed is the most useful lighting combination for office spaces in the tropics.

Credits to IEN Consultants for Infographics and information, For more details of their projects, please visit them at HERE

Credits to publishing papers (Daylight vs Artificial Light by Kalle Hashmi, Swedish Energy Agency) and (Task Learning Solutions, by Karin Tetlow, Humanscale)

ADDITIONAL INFO

IEN is in planning a detailed daylight documentation of the GEO Building, Malaysia, for which we did the daylight design and which has been in operation since 2007. The documentation will consist of:

1) Data logging of daylight levels at 12 workspaces in the building
2) Data logging of energy consumption of general lighting + task lighting
3) Monitoring the user-pattern of task lights and general lighting
4) Occupant surveys with specific questions on how people like to work in a daylight working environment. Pros and cons.

The results of this study will be published in a scientific journal, as well as in more popularly ready magazines (for example in FuturArc Magazine).

To my knowledge, this is the first time that a detailed documentation study is done for a tropical office building that has been successfully designed for daylighting.

Kind regards,
Gregers Reimann, MD
IEN Consultants
http://www.ien.com.my

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The Inconvenient Truth

Green Building Index has been around for more than 3 years and certifying dozens of buildings with various certification of standards. But with this effort in mind, there are indeed, many questions to be pondered upon if these certifications mean directly to a better built environment that will benefit mother nature or so? Anyone in the Green Building industry should take a step back and see if what we are doing is really heading to the change we seek for if we are keen for it. Change to see how our built environments can be more environmental friendly, in a very critical analytical manner.

“The major criticism of any green building rating system is that they generally tend to be perspective, often resulting in the project team seeking the easiest points available to achieve a high certification level, which in the worst case, can lead to a building that despite achieving a high rating, ultimately fails as a Green building as it only focuses on isolated aspects of sustainable practices.” SA Magazine

There are many painful realities actually to take note of, the primary indication is the market itself. These questions can be referred to the marketing professionals themselves, referring to  TheStarProperty, Reapfield Properties Sdn Bhd founder and president David Ong, and Malaysian Institute of Estate Agent (MIEA) president Julie Won spoke about their opinion on the Green Buildings Market.

Are there many people who ask for green buildings or homes? Wong: I think that the public is not really aware about this yet. Only those people in the industry will know, because they attend seminars and forums. But the public doesn’t really know what green is all about or what it means to go green. Ong: People are more concerned about bread and butter, than green. Wong: Incentives given by the Government are not as attractive, compared to Singapore. The Singapore Government is giving lots of incentive for developers who go green.

Acknowledging the Message and The Big Picture

That is only one of the many concerns i have for the future of Green Buildings, if market perceptions will be good towards it and if there is really a demand for it in present and future. But what worries me the most ultimately, comes to the message of Green Building itself. It’s a pleasure to meet Dr Nirmal Kishnani, who has been in the forefront in the green building industry as a thinker that delivered his presentation last week in SGBC, ( I am still reading his PHD thesis on Thermal Comfort HERE) 

His presentation consisted of some best management practices on how Green Building can bind community together, thus giving this sense of belonging to the community by being a local landmark, and also of course environmental friendly. And i think indirectly he also means that many other buildings worldwide will rather entertain a visible green technology than have an effective passive design that reduces the overall consumption of the building over its lifetime.

Understanding the language of Green Buildings

What gave me a twist of thought is, how many of the green buildings we design are really heading to this direction. How has Green Buildings in Malaysia been performing in the aspect of advocating the “green” message behind? Are we just merely producing buildings with great performance but neglecting post occupancy maintenance? Are we, anyone, in this industry being so driven daily by our task that we have forgotten that the greater awareness should be done to the public to sustain this message through? Is there a need for a better awareness on the bigger picture rather just marketing campaigns and investments profits particulars in this green building market? Are we potential to put this entire green building industry into an oxymoron situation or has it already happened?

The Greatest Asset of the Green Building – Green Occupants

You can have a super efficient building services system but without putting the considerations of the occupants into the decision making puts your entire design into a high risk of achieving a truly sustaining, green building. I believe the emphasize should be placed on the awareness and understanding and execution of the occupants towards the building. Despite being guided by various scoring points or index to achieve green buildings, in my opinion, there are few fundamentals any successful green buildings must achieve.

Green Energy Office, Bangi, entire office room is naturally daylighted, thus does not need artificial lighting assistance.

A Green Building satisfies and improves Occupants Living Conditions -

To improve occupants’ indoor comfort is best described as having the best design that provides natural daylights and also with surrounding landscapes. It is scientifically proven that having more common spaces with vegetation landscapes surrounded could improve the quality of work and also reducing sick building syndromes of the occupants.

Thermal comfort is also another matter, not too cold not too hot, just right. It’s a very simple approach but still widely done wrong in most Malaysia’s building for having centralized chiller plants where aircond supply is always as cold as 16 degree!

An EMS monitoring reports on energy savings, monetary savings too, and the breakdowns of it.

A Green Building educates Occupants on going Green -

To understand a building is similar as to understand a machine. Energy Management System is crucial to aware the building occupants on how their building is performing and how much this ‘machine” is consuming, and how the occupants can troubleshoot and improve their building performance. Having an EMS system installed improves the communication and understanding on how energy works in the building.

However EMS is just one of the many methods to promote green living, what matters most often is the activities within a building that generates the culture of green living. A more critical way of ensuring the occupants to cultivate the green living habit is to promote permaculture activities in the building, where food waste is decomposed, recycled of almost everything is practiced, and reducing comes first of course.

Kenyeang’s Solaris project boast a vast detail in landscape by promoting Green ramps

A Green Building brings Occupants closer to Nature -

And this is merely just about putting a lot of landscapes vegetation and assume that by having 15% or more of the total site areas landscaped you could score points for GBI.  Generally there is a lack of crucial understanding of the significance of landscape design in Malaysia. Designing landscape in a high rise residential tower truly has much more to explore about rather than assigning different plots of species. Combination with Waterscape could even make it more interesting, the sound of waterfall or fountains, all these are part of the Biophilic Design. 

It is known that Ken Yeang has been promoting green architecture relatively different compared to today’s as he emphasize a lot on the landscape details. Solaris does give an extensive amount of studies.

These 3 simple rules are merely just being said by my point of view for being an environmentalist and also being in the built environment career. But as simple as it sounds, that should be the way, but the contradicting part is that you do not find most buildings which are being certified as green buildings playing in this context. And not to the surprise of many, going through the 3 principles again could simply tie you back to our traditional rumah melayu, but needless to say, there are much more complicated design needed to be done in the context of city design, however with the breakthrough in technology at a appropriate scale can make us achieve such green buildings.

 Conclusion

A poor design in Green building that does not establish communication between the building and its occupants will fail the performance of the building ultimately. The three simple principles revolves around the occupant because that is the core of designing a green building, like how any other architects should be doing, studying on how the design of a building could affect their occupants.

Every Architecture speaks a language, but as the 21st century emerges, we need a new range of buildings, green buildings, that truly promote critical thinking on going green rather than some multi million investment game or green PR propaganda. The Green buildings need to advocate how green living is like, thanks to the rapid developments over the past centuries that produced many poor performing building all just for the sake of fast cash.

“Neither economic productivity nor aesthetic and intergenerational moral values can be protected without protecting the complex, organised system that provides the ecological context on which all values depend. To assume that all values are economic values is to ignore this implicit background value of the ecological processes that support economic, and all other, activity.” – Bryan Norton

Related posts:

Sustainable Building? or Green (Building) Washing? Malaysia Green Building Index GBI with its new INC and IBE Permaculture will Save the World, Some call it the Green Architecture.