IN HARMONY WITH THE ENVIRONMENT
by Lim Lay Ying
Property Times, New Straits Times
19th February 2005

If only the high-rises in Kuala Lumpur had “energy centres” like the one installed in Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, Japan, office workers, hotel guests, and condominium dwellers wouldn’t find themselves stuck in lifts or having to use the stairwells when the power outage occurred on January 13th this year.

The five-hour shut-down in power supply crippled businesses including offices, retail shops, factories, and restaurants, and temporarily disrupted the lives of 3.2 million people in Selangor, Johore, Kuala Lumpur, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca, and Putrajaya/Cyberjaya.

There was massive lunch hour congestion on the roads, and in Klang Valley alone, 12,000 people were stranded when the LRT and KTM Komuter train services came to a sudden halt. In the midst of all the chaos in the streets, firemen were busy trying to rescue those trapped in lifts and putting out fires which broke out when the cooling systems in some factories crashed.

The public outcry which ensued was hardly surprising considering the fact that this major blackout was the fourth which affected nearly the entire peninsular within a span of two decades. On August 3rd 1996, the massive power failure shut down all the power stations and triggered off a 6-hour disruption of power supply. The July 31st 1992 incident blacked-out fifteen power stations on the west coast for about six to ten hours, while the June 29th 1985 power outage affected eleven states in the peninsular for several hours.

72-hour power supply assured

Major power failures like these would have been a non-issue for those working or living in developments such as Roppongi Hills which is equipped with an energy centre featuring a gas-powered electric cogeneration system that assures a 72-hour supply of electricity in a blackout.

Completed in October 2003, the US$2.5 billion (RM9.5 billion) Roppongi Hills development sits on a 28.7-acre parcel of land located in downtown Tokyo, which was at one time occupied by some 500 small land parcel owners. Total floor area amounts to 8.2 million square feet and includes a mix of residential, retail, office, hotel, and cultural-related land uses.

There are altogether 837 apartments, over 140 shops occupying 290,625 square feet of retail space including close to almost 90 restaurants, more than 4 million square feet of office space, and a 389-room hotel. In addition to parking facilities for 2,762 cars, there are also parks, plazas, and an outdoor amphitheater, a television station, a cinema complex, a private club, and an observation deck.

Complementing these commercial-driven built space are cultural amenities such as an art museum, academic institutions, conference halls, and a 400-year-old Japanese garden and a Buddhist temple which have both been preserved and renovated. Additional facilities to serve the general community include medical clinics, a police station, a post-office, and a multilingual daycare centre.

Environmentally-friendly design features

Roppongi Hills, developed by Tokyo-based Mori Building Co. Ltd., was envisioned as an “authentic vertical garden city”. The vertical and fully mixed-used structures interspersed by lavish greenery around them display a new environment deliberately created for the people to live in harmony with nature. The development has a rooftop garden with rice paddies that also serves as a protective measure against earthquakes, state-of-the-art computer/information technology systems. In addition to double-decker elevators, the project included developing a new street and linking it to a major public highway loop besides other infrastructure improvements.

A year after full built-out, Roppongi Hills attracted more than 49 million visitors. The main office tower is almost fully occupied – mostly by global institutions, and so are the condominium units, and the retail and restaurant space. The amount of sales revenue raised at that point of time was already fifty per cent higher than the most optimistic numbers projected earlier. Adjacent commercial areas have also benefited in terms of increased sales, thanks to the Roppongi Hills development.

Saving energy

Roppongi Hills is not the only development thus far that has used design and technology to reduce environmental impact, cut costs, and provide better places to work. The Swiss Re Tower, or 30 St Mary Axe in London, designed by Foster & Partners, is another innovative urban development project which is expected to consume up to 50 per cent less energy than a comparable conventional office building.

It uses natural lighting and ventilation wherever possible. The façade consists of two layers of glass (the outer one double-glazed) enclosing a ventilated cavity with computer-controlled blinds. A system of weather sensors on the outside of the building monitors the temperature, wind speed and level of sunlight, closing blinds and opening window panels as necessary. The building’s shape maximizes the use of natural daylight, reducing the need for artificial lighting and providing impressive long-distance views even from deep inside the building.

In New York, architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Studio Daniel Libeskind, incorporated environmental design features throughout the Freedom Tower which will be built on the site of the World Trade Centre. The main tower, which will rise 1,776 feet, will include solar panels and a wind farm, the turbines of which are expected to deliver around one megawatt of power, enough to provide up to 20% of the building’s expected demand. Like other “green” buildings, it will rely on natural light and ventilation, and energy-efficient lighting.

The pressure to go “green”

With environmental and economic concerns becoming increasingly critical in a world where natural resources are shrinking fast, the building and construction industry in Malaysia will need to explore designs that are focused on the long-term environmental impact of maintaining and operating a building. Developers, architects, and engineers, can help to reshape the industry by building with more innovative, energy-efficient, and environmentally-friendly structures.

In doing so, they will discover that not only can they reduce energy consumption and lessen environmental impact but also lower operating expenses and replacement costs, create a more pleasant working environment, improve employers’ health and productivity, and even boost rental returns and property values.