Author and sustainability advocate Ken Hickson has shared his thoughts on the green building movement in Singapore and Australia for the past 25 years—in some cases, he has been directly involved—for the Singapore Green Building Council’s bi-annual magazine SG Green.
Here we provide some very relevant extracts:
1. Kevin Hill and Venturer: Modern age pioneers for timber construction
Mr Kevin Hill and Venturer Timberwork can be regarded as the pioneering advocates for timber buildings in the modern age, in Singapore, regionally, and even globally. He walks the talk. There are dozens of examples of his work—in Glulam, CLT, and MET—in Singaporean buildings.
I have worked with Kevin and his team to ‘spread the word’ about the incredible properties of timber for construction in the tropics. Even contributed personally to number of videos about his projects on the YouTube channel, irreverently entitled the ‘Ministry of Tropical Construction’ projects.
One of his most impressive works has been at Jurong Lake Gardens, involving six timber pavilions for the National Parks Board. This is one of the first projects to draw on the BCA incentive scheme to encourage the use of mass timber to reduce the carbon footprint of embodied carbon in a building.
2. Australia’s Olympic effort to “go green” with buildings
In Australia, the green building movement gained momentum after the 2000 Sydney Olympics, which received worldwide recognition as the ‘Green Games’. With venues and facilities that established new benchmarks in design excellence and best sustainability practices, Australia’s property and construction industry demonstrated that green buildings were achievable and practicable.
This was noted by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), in its book ‘Ten years of Progress: 2002 to 2012’. Brisbane-based architect Mr. David Baggs was the sustainability, eco-materials, and energy consultant for 10 of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Green Games venues. He went on to be praised by GBCA as ‘a renowned sustainability and materials expert’ and became Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects.
3. Singapore gets moving on green buildings
The inaugural World Green Building Day kicked off on 24 September 2009 to focus attention on the huge potential of buildings to reduce greenhouse emission. At the time, according to Mr. Tony Arnel, the Chair of both the World Green Building Council (WGBC) and (GBCA), the potential of the built environment was not being fully utilised.
The Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC) was officially established on 28 October 2009 during the first-ever International Green Building Conference and Singapore Green Building Week. It was heralded as “the only non-profit organisation with a concerted private-public sector partnership to achieve a world-class and sustainable built environment” in Singapore.
It was also in 2009 that the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) announced its commitment to make sure 80 percent of Singapore’s buildings had a ‘green mark’ by 2030. The aim was and remains to make the urban landscape a more sustainable environment.
4. How green is my building? Singapore’s Double Helix comes up with solutions.
Beyond advocating and facilitating the use of timber in greening the built environment, Double Helix Tracking Technologies delivers practical solutions to help companies understand their supply chains and communicate their product’s journey from source to construction site and onto the consumer. However, when Double Helix opened up shop in Club Street in 2008, it had no way of knowing what impact it would eventually have, playing such a key role in international collaboration to cut deforestation and illegal logging.
At its laboratory run by Chief Scientific Officer, Mr. Andrew Lowe at the University of Adelaide, Double Helix came up with a unique process to extract DNA from a log, or any piece of wood. In 2013, Double Helix was called on by the United States Forest Service (USFS) to build a DNA profile to match seized logs to the stumps of illegally harvested bigleaf maple trees in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
This was the first time that the US Lacey Act had been applied to a case of domestic illegal logging, and the first case in the world where DNA forensics was used to successfully trace the origin of illegally logged timber.
Taking this further, the Singapore company is now involved in producing and testing a new digital “Due Diligence Management Platform”, co-funded by Innovate UK and Enterprise Singapore, to help tackle deforestation which might be involved in the supply chains of commodities, including timber, pulp, paper, beef, cocoa, palm oil, leather, rubber, and soya.
5. Turning the tables: Focus on forests and furniture
Another Singaporean business enterprise that has been doing an amazing job of emphasising sustainability in all its activities—particularly in the field of furniture—is Roger & Sons.
In 2019, Mr. Ben Gunneberg, then-PEFC International CEO, when launching accreditation for PEFC’s Chain of Custody certification scheme, recognised by the Singapore Accreditation Council (SAC), and managed by Enterprise Singapore, drew attention to The Local Tree Project. This initiative by Roger & Sons, and supported by the National Parks Board, turns discarded logs into fashionable furniture, which is very much aligned with the principles of PEFC’s Trees Outside Forests.
He pointed out at the time that by using already felled trees that have been cut down for urban development instead of importing new raw materials, the project shows that good-quality furniture can be made with not only imported wood but also local waste wood and that local trees can have a useful afterlife.
6. Protiotype design for future buildings promotes whole life carbon.
When I first met Singapore-based New Zealander Mr. Gregory Cornelius, he showed me what he was doing to promote efficiency and train Facility Managers at Singapore Polytechnic. Not long after that, he invited me to be part of his Protiotype Design Future Build project, which aims to address Whole-Life Carbon, or embodied carbon, in buildings and energy efficiency at the same time.
Bringing together the talents and experience of a number of architects and designers, Protiotype came up with a smart and sustainable six storey shophouse design, hypothetically situated in the Geylang district of Singapore. The virtual exhibit “Protiotype 21-S” was live online at the London Design Festival in September 2021.
Mr. Cornelius started his Protiotype Design Science as an open research lab and de facto think-tank to test ideas and serve as a proving ground for concepts with potential for industry adoption, scaling, and commercialisation. In 2017, Protiotype developed a Smart Sustainable Building showcase at Singapore Polytechnic, integrating functioning products and services from technology vendors into the Lab showcase.
7. Leadership in sustainability awards recognise notable people, projects and places.
Attending the SGBC-BCA Leadership in Sustainability Awards 2024 Awards Ceremony at the Orchard Hotel in June 2024 was a reward to appreciate the excellent work of a number of individuals and companies.
I witnessed what was described by SGBC as “a surge of high-quality submissions, highlighting the industry’s heightened commitment to sustainability”. The award winners received their trophies from the evening’s guest-of-honour Ms Indranee Rajah, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, Second Minister for Finance and Second Minister for National Development.
The biennial Awards programme, first held in 2016, honours significant achievements by Professionals, Businesses and Building Projects in the development of a green and sustainable built environment. All were well-deserved winners, but I cannot resist praising the Singapore Land Group. The owners of 42-year-old Singapore Land Tower, chose to modernise the building through an extensive asset enhancement initiative starting in 2021 instead of going for demolition.
For its new sustainability features such as a low emissivity double-glazed curtain wall for the façade and upgrades to the air-conditioning and mechanical ventilation system, the building emerged a winner in the Carbon Performance category of the SGBC-BCA Leadership in Sustainability Awards 2024.
8. Singapore hotels up their sustainability game
In 2022, I decided to do an informal survey for Asian Journeys magazine of six Singapore hotels, which I had become very familiar with since my first visit in 1981 and from living here since 1983. They are: Parkroyal Beach Road, formerly the Plaza; Marriott Tang Plaza, formerly the Dynasty; Parkroyal Collection, formerly Marina Mandarin; Grand Hyatt in Scotts Road; Shangri-La Hotel in Orange Grove Road; Raffles Hotel in Beach Road.
By my count, they had all made progress along the sustainability journey, but one hotel was a standout in more ways than one. The owners of Parkroyal Collection, decided not to demolish the Marina Mandarin, but took it through a major retrofit inside and out, therefore avoiding the production of 51,300 metric tonnes avoiding the production of 51,300 metric tonnes of CO2 emissions from de-construction, which they calculated would be like wiping out 10,000 hectares of forest, an area larger than all of Singapore’s nature reserves combined.
An estimated S$3 million was spent replacing all the windows in the hotel with double-glazed glass, along with a new Atrium skylight to filter natural daylight into the indoor spaces. Together these measures reduced the ambient temperature by 2°C, leading to a 2 percent reduction of energy use, as the air-conditioning and chillers run at a lower fan speed, while maintaining the same ambient temperature.
The hotel also installed 210 rooftop solar panels to generate over 350 kwh of electricity per day, enough to power the hotel’s 13 lifts and emergency lighting, thereby further reducing overall energy consumption.
9. Wood Central media platform for the built environment
Indoor air quality (IAQ) has become a crucial consideration in modern building design as people spend more time indoors, making the air we breathe inside buildings critical to our health.
This was a clear message contained in a report I produced for Wood Central, which included comments from SGBC about what is being done in Singapore to address formaldehyde through an alliance for action in 2022-2023, which culminated in a set of indoor air quality guidelines for the industry.
This was just one outcome from my attendance as Media Partner at the International Built Environment Week (IBEW) and BEX in September 2024, which I covered in ABC Carbon Express Issue 260 and previewed in ABC Carbon Express (Issue 259).
Also with a strong built environment focus was the World Architecture Festival at Marina Bay Sands in the first week of November. I also met up with well-known Queensland architect and educator Mr. Mark Thomson – Director of Eco Effective Solutions – whom I had not seen for many years.
He was quick to tell me his first port of call – even before WAF had started – was to inspect the amazing Mass Engineered Timber (MET) monastery at Bright Hill, which was the work of Mr. Kevin Hill and his team at Venturer Timberwork. As a WAF judge, he pointed out to me that low carbon materials and net-zero buildings were positively impacting many advanced developed markets. Despite worldwide political changes, reducing greenhouse emissions and addressing the changing climate are still global priorities.
10. Hill resort home with an east-west outlook
My first “green home” was on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia and for its time it was as green as it could possibly be when completed for occupation in December 2000. Built out of rammed earth and Australian timber, it was designed to be cool in summer and conveniently warm in winter.
Besides being very energy-efficient, we collected rainwater for use indoors and out, We also disposed of our waste on site – including sewerage – in an ecofriendly fashion. Designed and built as a large well-equipped family home with four pavilions, it was not long before we decided to make even better use of its three-bedroom self-contained guest house, even before the days of AirBnB.
For the fuller version of this article, go to the SG Green here.
