Dense and Green Building Typologies: Design Perspectives [1st ed.] 978-981-13-3034-6;978-981-13-3035-3

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxxi
Dense and Green Building Typologies: Design Perspectives (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 1-4
Defining Dense and Green Building Typologies (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 5-6
Evolution of High-Rise Greenery in Singapore (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 7-11
Frameworks and Guidelines Promoting High-Rise Greenery (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 13-19
Examples of Successful Integration of Greenery with Buildings (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 21-26
Design Process That Leads to Dense and Green Buildings (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 27-31
Typology of Greenery and Its Integration (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 33-38
Use of Framework and Guidelines During Design (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 39-41
Challenges During Construction and Post-occupancy Observations (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 43-47
Planning and Conducting Integrated Design Charrettes (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 49-53
Perceived Benefits of Greenery Within Buildings (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 55-62
Integration of Greenery with Different Building Functions (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 63-66
Post-occupancy Analysis (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 67-68
Observed Benefits Versus Perceived Benefits (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 69-73
Impact on Neighbourhood Level (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 75-78
Impact on Urban Ecosystems (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 79-82
Impact on Adverse Effects of High Density (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 83-86
Improvements and Suggestions for Future Developments (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 87-90
Conclusion (Thomas Schröpfer, Sacha Menz)....Pages 91-92

Citation preview

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN ARCHITEC TURAL DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

Thomas Schröpfer Sacha Menz

Dense and Green Building Typologies Design Perspectives 123

SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology Series Editor Thomas Schröpfer, Architecture and Sustainable Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Singapore

Indexed by SCOPUS Understanding the complex relationship between design and technology is increasingly critical to the field of Architecture. The Springer Briefs in Architectural Design and Technology series provides accessible and comprehensive guides for all aspects of current architectural design relating to advances in technology including material science, material technology, structure and form, environmental strategies, building performance and energy, computer simulation and modeling, digital fabrication, and advanced building processes. The series features leading international experts from academia and practice who provide in-depth knowledge on all aspects of integrating architectural design with technical and environmental building solutions towards the challenges of a better world. Provocative and inspirational, each volume in the Series aims to stimulate theoretical and creative advances and question the outcome of technical innovations as well as the far-reaching social, cultural, and environmental challenges that present themselves to architectural design today. Each brief asks why things are as they are, traces the latest trends and provides penetrating, insightful and in-depth views of current topics of architectural design. Springer Briefs in Architectural Design and Technology provides must-have, cutting-edge content that becomes an essential reference for academics, practitioners, and students of Architecture worldwide.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13482

Thomas Schröpfer Sacha Menz •

Dense and Green Building Typologies Design Perspectives

123

Thomas Schröpfer Architecture and Sustainable Design Singapore University of Technology and Design Singapore, Singapore

Sacha Menz Future Cities Laboratory Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Switzerland

ISSN 2199-580X ISSN 2199-5818 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology ISBN 978-981-13-3034-6 ISBN 978-981-13-3035-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

Greening Singapore Singapore is a small island with big needs. Our urban transformation since independence has been dramatic but our urban challenges remain the same—how do we accommodate the needs of a country and a city within our limited land; how can we build an endearing home, a distinctive global city. Our planning approach helps us balance various needs. It reflects the very heart of our urban governance framework which focuses on the long-term and on enduring benefits for Singapore. We start with the Concept Plan which is an integrated land use and transport plan that looks 40–50 years into the future. Regularly reviewed, it serves as a roadmap for the way forward and provides a structured framework for agencies to come together to consider changing trends and long-term land use needs. The broad strategies laid out in the Concept Plan get translated into the Master Plan which serves to guide Singapore’s development needs over the next 10 to 15 years and gets comprehensively reviewed at least once every 5 years. Planning for greenery has always been important to providing a quality living environment, and as a strategy to strengthen Singapore’s biophilic ‘City in a Garden’ identity. At present, we have safeguarded 9% of our land for parks and nature reserves—visually and experientially, the greenery seems more pervasive than that. Integrating urban development with greenery has been a key strategy. With a wide range of parks well distributed in different areas, relentless tree planting along roads and an island-wide network of ‘park connectors’ to make green spaces joined up, the greenery is extensive. Greenery provides visual relief and space for recreation, and it is an important component in creating a liveable environment, especially in a high-density context like Singapore’s. As we develop further, we seek to introduce more greenery to provide visual relief, community space and mitigate urban heat island effects. A number of guidelines have been introduced to encourage greenery as part of developments. One example is the Landscaping for

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Foreword

Urban Spaces and High-Rises (LUSH) programme. First introduced by URA in 2009 as a consolidated urban and skyrise greening scheme comprising incentives and requirements, the intent is to capitalise on development as a means to inject more greenery into the city. The premise is simple—replace the greenery which has been taken away as a building is developed or redeveloped. The programme has been implemented in close collaboration with private-sector partners. Today, greenery is increasingly become a norm in developments, creating a more pleasant and comfortable urban environment. In Singapore, we have been lucky to have many leading proponents of dense and green building typologies pushing the boundaries and producing seminal works here. A number of these leading practitioners have been interviewed for this publication “Dense and Green Building Typologies: Designers Perspectives”. I believe the interviews have helped the practitioners to reflect on the integration of greenery with developments and will put them in good stead for their future projects. The rich knowledge captured in this publication will serve many others. Singapore, Singapore

Hwang Yu-Ning Chief Planner Urban Redevelopment Authority

Preface

The following book chapters are based on the interviews conducted over 6 months (March–August 2017) with renowned architects and landscape architects in the context of the ‘Dense and Green Building Typologies’ research project of the Future Cities Laboratory. The interviews probe the practical knowledge accumulated over the years by the interviewees. The volume contributes to the understanding of how greenery can be integrated into the high-density built environment during the design, construction and maintenance stages of dense and green buildings. It does so by investigating design thinking, policies, guidelines, challenges, impacts and benefits in the context of Singapore.

Dense and Green Building Typologies Project Dense and Green Building Typologies is a 5-year research project of the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL), established by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the National Research Foundation Singapore in collaboration with key academic partners including the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). FCL studies sustainable future cities through science, by design and in place, with its High-Density Mixed-Use Cities Scenario developing newly integrated planning paradigms, research methodologies and implementation processes to support higher population densities, higher standards of environmental sustainability and enhanced liveability. As part of that scenario, Dense and Green Building Typologies investigates the environmental, social, urban, architectural and economic benefits of large buildings with integrated green spaces in high-density contexts systematically through a series of international in-depth case studies, including in Asia, Europe and the Americas. Singapore, Singapore Zürich, Switzerland

Thomas Schröpfer Sacha Menz

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Acknowledgements

The interviewer would like to express his sincere gratitude to Prof. Dr. Thomas Schröpfer (Principal Investigator) and Prof. Sacha Menz (Co-Principal Investigator) of the Dense and Green Building Typologies research project, for professional guidance, kind support, encouragement and valuable critiques of this research work. The interviewer would like to express great appreciation to Dr. Panagiotis Mavros and Kristina Jazuk of Cognition, Perception and Behaviour in Urban Environments research project at Future Cities Laboratory, for their constructive and insightful suggestions and discussions during the planning and development of this interview questionnaire. The interviewer would also like to thank Emek Erdolu, of Dense and Green Building Typologies at Future Cities Laboratory, for assistance in recording the interviews and Daniel Sin, IT Manager and Nigel Sng, Senior IT Specialist of the Future Cities Laboratory of the support team department for their help in offering the resources in conducting the interviews. Special thanks to various people for their help in arranging the interviews for this research project; Elise Luong, Armand Devillard and Laurence Savy (G8A Architecture & Urban Planning); Lin Bolt and Serena Khor (WOHA Architects Pte Ltd.); Dr. Gillian Lin Oam (Tierra Design (S) Pte. Ltd.); Janice Lee Chooi Yoke and Vanessa Yang Ting Ting (CPG Consultants Pte. Ltd.); and Phyllis Koh Su Ying, Cindy Wee and Seah Chee Kien (RSP Architects Planners & Engineers (Pte.) Ltd.). Singapore, Singapore

Mayank Kaushal

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About the Authors

Prof. Dr. Thomas Schröpfer Architecture and Sustainable Design, SUTD Principal Investigator, Dense and Green Building Typologies, Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre Prof. Dr. Thomas Schröpfer is Professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD) at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Principal Investigator of the Dense and Green Building Typologies project in the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC-FCL). He began his academic career at Harvard University where he was appointed as Assistant Professor of Architecture in 2004 and Associate Professor of Architecture in 2008. He was named Full Professor after joining SUTD in 2011, where he became Associate Head of Pillar of ASD, Co-Director of the SUTD-JTC I3 Centre and Director of the University’s award-winning Advanced Architecture Laboratory. He held visiting professorships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore. In 2015, he was appointed

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About the Authors

as a member of the SEC-FCL Steering Committee. His book publications have been translated into several languages, and include Dense + Green: Innovative Building Types for Sustainable Urban Architecture (2016), Ecological Urban Architecture: Qualitative Approaches to Sustainability (2012) and Material Design: Informing Architecture by Materiality (2011). He is the recipient of prestigious awards and recognitions, including the Singapore President’s Design Award, the German Design Award and the Asia Education Leadership Award. His research and design projects have been exhibited at important international venues, including the Venice Architecture Biennale and the World Congress of Architecture.

Prof. Sacha Menz Head, Institute of Technology in Architecture, ETH Zürich Co-Principal Investigator, Dense and Green Building Typologies, Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre Prof. Sacha Menz is Professor of Architecture and Building Process at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich. He has served as the Dean of the Department of Architecture and has been leading the Institute of Technology in Architecture (ITA) for over 10 years, where he designed and coordinated the building process of the Arch_Tec_Lab. He also established the Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) Programme in Architecture, Real Estate and Construction, as well as several CAS (Certificate of Advanced Studies) courses at ETH. He held the position of Deputy Director at NCCR (National Centre of Competence in Research) in Digital Fabrication and was a guest professor at South-Eastern University in Nanjing, China. Trained in Architecture at ETH with a master's degree, Sacha co-established sam Architects and Partners (SAM) in Zürich/Switzerland. SAM designed the award-winning “Vorderer Sternen” Building in Zurich. He is member of several boards such as the Architectural Board of Consultants for the City of Ostfildern, Germany; Board of Directors of Swiss Engineers and Architects Association (SIA), Reviewing Board for Clusters of Excellence of the DFG

About the Authors

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(German Research Foundation). He has authored academic publications, including Three Books on the Subject of Building Process and Public Space Evolution in High-Density Living in Singapore and actively contributes in international conferences and architectural juries.

Interviewer—Researcher

Mayank Kaushal (MK) Researcher, Dense and Green Building Typologies, Future Cities Laboratory (FCL), Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC) Mayank is an architect, urban designer, researcher and an avid writer with sustainable design expertise and has worked on diverse typologies in the public and private sectors, spanning various cultural and climatic regions across Asia. Over the years, he was involved in distinguished award-winning projects that celebrate sustainability by qualitatively and quantitatively sculpting environmental resilience. He is constantly working to harmonise research with practical application. He has contributed to the master’s programme as a juror for studio presentations at the National University of Singapore and through his recent editorial work ‘SG3 – Decoding Sustainable Urbanism, Singapore’, he advocates of a rethink at the drawing board through objective research and analysis. His current role as a researcher at Future Cities Laboratory focuses on understanding qualitative and quantifiable design benefits of Dense and Green Building Typologies.

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Interviewer—Researcher

Thibault Pilsudski Research Assistant, Dense and Green Building Typologies, Future Cities Laboratory (FCL), Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC) Thibault Pilsudski’s role at the Future Cities Laboratory is investigating maintenance aspects of greenery in high-rise buildings, as well as analysing them in terms of Green Plot Ratio (GnPR) as an indicator for the density of greenery. Within the larger urban context, he also examines the impact of dense and green buildings to urban density and accessibility to landscape spaces. Before FCL, he has worked for 1 year at the Centre for Liveable Cities in Singapore on various urban projects such as the pedestrianisation of Orchard Road. He holds a Master of Urban Studies and Public Policy from Sciences Po Paris and a Master of Urban Planning from the National University of Singapore.

Interviewees—Architects and Landscape Architects

Sonny Chionh (SC) Associate Director, RSP Architects Planners & Engineers (Pte) Ltd Sonny Chionh has more than 19 years of architectural project experience in the design, development, coordination and implementation of medium- and large-sized projects. As an Associate Director, he has worked on a wide range of developments, from education to hospitality, commercial, residential, institutional and retail in Singapore, Malaysia and the UAE. He is the project architect for close to 20 schools when he was at the Public Works Department/CPG Consultants and now in RSP. Some of his major works include the MAS Building (A&A), Holiday Inn Express Clarke Quay and Westgate. He has also undertaken a number of due-diligence exercises for buildings requiring statutory and technical assessments. He is RSP’s joint Quality & Environment Manager, overseeing quality and environmental aspects, ensuring good processes and documentation are in place. He is a

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Interviewees—Architects and Landscape Architects

Registered Architect with the Board of Architects, Singapore and a member of the Singapore Institute of Architects. He received a Bachelor of Architecture (with Honours) from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and a Diploma in Architectural Technology from the Singapore Polytechnic.

Manuel der Hagopian (MDH) Partner and Co-Founder, G8A Architecture & Urban Planning Manuel der Hagopian (born in 1971 in Geneva, Switzerland) graduated from the Geneva Institute of Architecture, Geneva, Switzerland (IAUG) and Belleville School of Architecture, Paris (ENSAPB). He is one of the original partners of group8 architects, established in Geneva in 2000, and is a Co-founder and Partner at G8A Architecture & Urban Planning in charge of operations at the Singapore office. He also co-manages the offices in Geneva, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. His main responsibilities include design direction, conceptual design and project management. Through G8A’s think tank, aptly named 8+, he is currently pursuing his strong interest in the consequences of a rapidly growing population’s impact on the residential housing situation in South East Asia. Since 2015, he has been a guest professor at SUTD (Singapore University of Technology and Design), where he aims to strengthen the transfer of architectural and design knowledge between Singapore and Switzerland.

Interviewees—Architects and Landscape Architects

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Richard Hassell (RH) Co-Founding Director, WOHA Architects Pte Ltd Richard Hassell is the co-Founding Director of WOHA. He graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1989 and was awarded a Master of Architecture degree from RMIT University, Melbourne, in 2002. He has lectured at many universities and served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Western Australia. He gave a lecture at ETH Zürich, under the Future Cities Laboratory European—South East Asian Architectural Dialogue in November 2016 together with Wong Mun Summ. He has mentored students under NUS’s Embedded Studio in Practice programme, anchored the University’s MSc in Integrated Sustainable Design Masterclass since 2011 and conducted a Design Studio at the Singapore University of Technology and Design in 2016. WOHA exhibited in Mexico City at the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico from March to April 2017, as part of the 2017 Mextropoli Festival. This exhibition travelled to Austin, Texas, and was shown at the newly opened Austin Central Library from February to April 2018. They also participated at the 2016 Venice Architectural Biennale. In conjunction with their installation in Venice, WOHA has launched a new book, titled ‘Garden City Mega City’, which shares strategies for the burgeoning megacities of the tropical belt.

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Interviewees—Architects and Landscape Architects

Simon Morrison (SM) Director, ICN Design International Pte Ltd B Lasc Arch (Hons) Landscape Architecture, MSILA, Accr.LA A landscape architect with over 20 years’ of experience in landscape and a background in the construction industry, he has worked as a leader, designer, advisor and consultant in Australasia, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, acquiring valuable experience working in wide-ranging environments, climates and cultures around the world. Following work in the construction industry, he undertook academic studies graduating with honours in Landscape Architecture. Since then, he has worked in private and public practice, designing and implementing a broad range of projects for government and commercial clients. These range from planning and feasibility studies to master planning, commercial, residential and industrial sites through conceptual design, detail design and documentation to implementation and roles in supervision and contract management. He is active in promoting a clear understanding of the landscape design process and advocating the development of the design profession.

Interviewees—Architects and Landscape Architects

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Franklin Po (FP) Chairman + Design Director—Tierra Design (S) Pte Ltd and PODesign Franklin’s journey of many years in the design discipline had its roots at the University of California, Irvine. These early years witnessed the beginnings of his interest in art and design. Artists Vija Celmins, Craig Kaufman, Robert Irwin, Ed Moses and Larry Bell were all influences. Celmins introduced him to the work of Van Gogh and Max Ernst, to Dada, to Surrealism, to The Bauhaus and to architects Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. Enrolling in architecture classes at California State Polytechnic University, he met Richard Neutra, Buckminster Fuller and Raymond Kappe (Founder of SCI-Arc). A Welton Beckett Fellowship enabled him to attend UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Planning. Graduating in 1973 with a master’s degree in Architecture with Design Honors, he nonetheless was taught a tough lesson by architect Yoshio Taniguchi that would serve him well during his 20 years of practice in Los Angeles. Tanaguchi’s sharp words continue to remind him to examine his work critically: ‘… SO WHAT!’. He continues to guide Tierra’s focus as a strong proponent of integrative design and landscape urbanism. In 2015, he won the Singapore President*s Design Award Designer of the Year.

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Interviewees—Architects and Landscape Architects

Henry Steed (HS) Director, ICN Design International Pte Ltd Henry Steed is a Chartered Landscape Architect (UK) with 45 years of experience, 38 in the Asian tropics. He is the Design Director of ICN Design International, an award-winning firm of Landscape Architects based in Singapore. His years of working in Asia and the Middle East has gained him a reputation as a leading landscape designer. His experience extends through tropical, arid and temperate zones, in urban, rural and natural environments. The making of fine landscapes, to him, involves sensitive artistry and hard-nosed technical knowledge of construction and horticulture. These skills are used to transform urban hardness into attractive landscapes for people to enjoy, and to stay in touch with nature. He has created every kind of landscape, from nature conservation and nature trails to gardens for hotels and housing, parks, campuses, zoos, streetscape, airports, hospitals and civic design for high-rise city centres. Passing on his experience, he teaches NUS students and his staff, encouraging them to develop expertise and create their own visions for the future. He has written and illustrated a book on ‘Greening the Vertical Garden City’, which deals with the techniques to design and install landscapes at every level in the high-rise city (Publisher URA and NParks).

Interviewees—Architects and Landscape Architects

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Tan Shao Yen (TSY) CEO, CPG Consultants Pte Ltd President, Board of Architects Singapore As the Chief Executive Officer of CPG Consultants, he is responsible for the business and operations of CPG Consultants and CPG’s overseas offices in China, India, Vietnam, Macau, the Philippines and the Middle East. He is well supported by a multidisciplinary community of architects, engineers, planners, designers and specialists. Together, they believe in taking an integrative approach to provide holistic solutions, by collaborating through integrated teaming involving the client, designers, consultants and stakeholders; and applying research, cross-disciplinary knowledge and technology within the design process. Trained as an architect, he has over 25 years of experience designing and delivering projects across a diverse range of typologies, in public and private sectors; and spanning different climatic and cultural regions, including Singapore, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, etc. Some of his ideas were selected to be exhibited and published by URA in 2010 for the ‘20 under 45: the next generation’. In 2014, he was recognised as the Green Architect of the Year by BCA-SGBC. He is currently serving as the President of the Board of Architects, Singapore.

Contents

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1 1 2 2 4

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Defining Dense and Green Building Typologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Evolution of High-Rise Greenery in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Frameworks and Guidelines Promoting High-Rise Greenery . . . . .

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Examples of Successful Integration of Greenery with Buildings . . .

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Design Process That Leads to Dense and Green Buildings . . . . . . .

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Typology of Greenery and Its Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Use of Framework and Guidelines During Design . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Challenges During Construction and Post-occupancy Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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10 Planning and Conducting Integrated Design Charrettes . . . . . . . . .

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11 Perceived Benefits of Greenery Within Buildings Environmental Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thermal Comfort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Solar Shading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daylight Glare Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Urban Heat Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Air Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Air Pollutants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55 57 58 58 59 59 59 60

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Dense and Green Building Typologies: Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Questionnaire and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Design Perspectives . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Noise Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Biodiversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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13 Post-occupancy Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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14 Observed Benefits Versus Perceived Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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15 Impact on Neighbourhood Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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16 Impact on Urban Ecosystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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17 Impact on Adverse Effects of High Density . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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18 Improvements and Suggestions for Future Developments . . . . . . . .

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19 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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12 Integration of Greenery with Different Building Hotels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hospitals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Offices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Public Housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Private Housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Institutional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shopping Mall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Series Editor, Editors and Contributors

Series Editor Prof. Dr. Thomas Schröpfer is Professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD) at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Principal Investigator of the Dense and Green Building Typologies project in the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC-FCL). He began his academic career at Harvard University where he was appointed as Assistant Professor of Architecture in 2004 and Associate Professor of Architecture in 2008. He was named Full Professor after joining SUTD in 2011, where he became Associate Head of Pillar of ASD, Co-Director of the SUTD-JTC I3 Centre and Director of the University’s award-winning Advanced Architecture Laboratory. He held visiting professorships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore. In 2015, he was appointed as a member of the SEC-FCL Steering Committee. His book publications have been translated into several languages, and include Dense + Green: Innovative Building Types for Sustainable Urban Architecture (2016), Ecological Urban Architecture: Qualitative Approaches to Sustainability (2012) and Material Design: Informing Architecture by Materiality (2011). He is the recipient of prestigious awards and recognitions, including the Singapore President’s Design Award, the German Design Award and the Asia Education Leadership Award. His research and design projects have been exhibited at important international venues, including the Venice Architecture Biennale and the World Congress of Architecture.

Interviewers Mayank Kaushal is an architect, urban designer, researcher and an avid writer with sustainable design expertise and has worked on diverse typologies in the public and private sectors, spanning various cultural and climatic regions across Asia. Over the years, he was involved in distinguished award-winning projects that

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Series Editor, Editors and Contributors

celebrate sustainability by qualitatively and quantitatively sculpting environmental resilience. He is constantly working to harmonise research with practical application. He has contributed to the master’s programme as a juror for studio presentations at the National University of Singapore and through his recent editorial work ‘SG3—Decoding Sustainable Urbanism, Singapore’, he advocates of a rethink at the drawing board through objective research and analysis. His current role as a researcher at Future Cities Laboratory focuses on understanding qualitative and quantifiable design benefits of Dense and Green Building Typologies. Thibault Pilsudski’s role at the Future Cities Laboratory is investigating maintenance aspects of greenery in high-rise buildings, as well as analysing them in terms of Green Plot Ratio (GnPR) as an indicator for the density of greenery. Within the larger urban context, he also examines the impact of dense and green buildings to urban density and accessibility to landscape spaces. Before FCL, he has worked for 1 year at the Centre for Liveable Cities in Singapore on various urban projects such as the pedestrianisation of Orchard Road. He holds a Master of Urban Studies and Public Policy from Sciences Po Paris and a Master of Urban Planning from the National University of Singapore.

Interviewees Sonny Chionh (SC) RSP Architects Planners & Engineers (Pte) Ltd, Singapore, Singapore Manuel der Hagopian (MDH) G8A Architecture & Urban Planning, Singapore, Singapore Richard Hassell (RH) WOHA Architects Pte Ltd, Singapore, Singapore Simon Morrison (SM) ICN Design International Pte. Ltd., Singapore, Singapore Franklin Po (FP) Tierra Design (S) Pte. Ltd. and PODesign, Singapore, Singapore Henry Steed (HS) ICN Design International Pte. Ltd., Singapore, Singapore Tan Shao Yen (TSY) CPG Consultants Pte. Ltd. and Board of Architects, Singapore, Singapore

Acronyms

BCA CUGE FCL GFA GnPR HDB LEAF LRA LTA LUSH NParks NUS PUB URA

Building and Construction Authority Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology Future Cities Laboratory Gross Floor Area Green Plot Ratio Housing and Development Board Landscape Excellence Assessment Framework Landscape Replacement Area Land Transport Authority Landscape for Urban Spaces and High rises National Parks Board National University of Singapore Public Utilities Board Urban Redevelopment Authority

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Initials

Interviewer MK

Mayank Kaushal

Interviewees SC MDH RH SM FP HS TSY

Sonny Chionh Manuel der Hagopian Richard Hassell Simon Morrison Franklin Po Henry Steed Tan Shao Yen

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Chapter 1

Dense and Green Building Typologies: Design Perspectives

Background With the increasing number of dense and green building typologies in Singapore comes a paradigm shift in the built environment. It produces firm legislation-driven guidelines to remain committed to ‘City in a Garden’ concept even into its heights. Nearly half the size of metropolitan London, Singapore has transformed modern metropolis with a diversified economy in a short span of 50 years. In the wake of rapid urbanisation, Singapore’s unique circumstances and land scarcity demand the need to find innovative ways to optimise ‘Garden City Ambience’ with the limited land area. In the year 2001, Prime Minister Goh stated that ‘going vertical’ in the form of roof deck gardens, sky terraces, landscaped balconies and planter boxes could be one amongst a few other strategies. He also highlighted the need to generate awareness of the benefits of high-rise greenery so that building owners and designers would incorporate such greenery in their building designs.1 The benefits of skyrise greenery have since then been well documented. Among them are environmental benefits such as stormwater retention, improvement of air quality, economic benefits such as energy savings, and socio-economic benefits that include recreational opportunities in a dense urban environment.2 Much of the greening efforts in Singapore are put into action through governance and schemes that promote greenery in dense urban environments. Despite the motivation in the form of legislation and the fact that greenery in buildings has many benefits, the dense

1 ‘Speech by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at the opening ceremony of the 38th International Feder-

ation of Landscape Architects (Ifla) World Congress & Landscape 2001 Exhibition, 26 June 2001, 9.30 a.m.’ http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/speeches/view-html?filename=2001062601.htm. [accessed 15 October 2018]. 2 Belinda Yuen and Wong Nyuk Hien, ‘Resident Perceptions and Expectations of Rooftop Gardens in Singapore’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 73.4 (2005), 263–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. landurbplan.2004.08.001. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_1

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and green building typologies are still not often pursued by building professionals.3 Hence, it may be appropriate to ascertain whether the assumed benefits of skyrise greenery are perceived to be true among the professionals in the building industry. If they were indeed deemed to be true, it would raise the question of why greening of urbanscapes are not as widely adopted as they should be and what obstacles there are to their development. A qualitative perception study of built environment professionals such as renowned architects and landscape architects would aid in removing the inherent barriers in the adoption of greenery in dense urban environments. The book comprises of 17 chapters (Chaps. 2–18) based on the interviews conducted over 6 months (March–August 2017).

Interviews The objective of conducting face-to-face interviews (Fig. 1.1) for this book was to determine the inherent benefits and barriers of deploying dense and green building typologies that industry pioneers perceive to be true. Another aim of the interview was to analyse any disparity in views between the different disciplines. The discussions that are laid out in the book were carried out to determine the current perception of renowned designers. For the investigation, prominent designers (four architects and three landscape architects) who have designed and realised award-winning dense and green buildings, were chosen. The interviews were conducted among two target disciplines, namely Decision Makers/Design Lead from the architectural firms registered under the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA), landscape architectural firms recognised by Singapore Institute of Landscape Architects (SILA). These two target disciplines also enable to study perception that influences design thinking and thus adoption of dense and green building typologies. The respondents have completed several noteworthy and award-winning projects across Singapore with varying functions such as The Interlace, Skyville@Dawson, Punggol Waterway Terraces I, Oasia Downtown, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and Solaris. These projects are each distinct and embrace incorporating greenery into dense urban environments in their unique ways.

Questionnaire and Analysis A comprehensive questionnaire was developed with consultations not only from architects, academics and urban designers but also from researcher/s specialising in cognition, perception and behaviour in urban environments. The interdisciplinary 3 Nyuk

Hien Wong et al., ‘Perception Study of Building Professionals on the Issues of Green Roof Development in Singapore’, Architectural Science Review, 48.3 (2005), 205–14. https://doi.org/10. 3763/asre.2005.4827.

The Questionnaire and Analysis

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Fig. 1.1 Typical interview set up and recording of a response, an image showing Interviewee Manuel Der Hagopian and Interviewer Mayank Kaushal. Credit to Emek Erdolu

discussion allowed to frame the questions in a manner which was neutral, unbiased and open-ended. The interviewee responses were therefore not constrained to specific categories as provided by the interviewer but consist of any answer they wish to give. By using such a strategy, it was expected that the open-ended questions would provide replies that better reflect a personal perception. All the respondents are asked the same questions in the order in which a typical design thinking is progressed; namely, concept, design development and post-occupancy, only 17 most relevant of the 26 questions asked are included in this book as chapters. This structured strategy was a way of increasing the comparability of responses and ensure responses to all queries, for every interviewee. Furthermore, this approach provides a ‘natural’ basis of organisation for analysis of data from design to construction and handover to post-occupancy. To understand the impact and challenges that lead to individual perceptions, they were probed through a detailed analysis of interview transcripts. Information was collected using structured open-ended interviews, and the results were qualitatively analysed. Only selected answers were examined using NVivo. The usage of the software was kept limited to help with categorisation and classification of the interview data. It allowed for qualitative data to be easily managed, cross-referenced, organised and analysed. It further enabled the analysis in brainstorming and mapping key topics. The book reveals a qualitative study through a cross-table discussion between the interviewer and the interviewees.

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Findings The results of interviewing of seven renowned architectural, and landscape designers show all kinds of personal opinion, design approaches and anecdotes that have certain underlying elements commonly and distinctively. Therefore, the chapters are helpful for readers to describe these topics for differences and similarities, and in finding out their approach towards dense and green building typologies. The book provides examples of how architectural thinking can be applied in these areas, thus combining different perspectives into a consistent whole. In-depth experiences from design heads of architectural firms help readers to understand the concepts of landscape and design to form blueprints for their own professional approach.

Chapter 2

Defining Dense and Green Building Typologies

MK: Please define dense and green building typologies based on your industry experiences. HS: The city centre, for example, typically in a modern city, tends to be rather highrise and generally becomes flat as it goes further out. There are varying definitions of dense and green. You have high-rise buildings that are close together, you then rely on space in between the buildings whether to determine if it is overcrowded or spacious. And when you get into the lower areas, the question is how closely the buildings and roads are packed together, with minimum or maximum green, for example, if you have a suburban road which does not have any trees in it because it is so narrow, you can consider it as over-dense. But if you have got enough space to plant a row of trees on that road, it becomes greener. So, density and green tend to come together, and it is a kind of push-pull arrangement depending on how the planning has been done. MDH: When it comes to the point where a dense city must find a balance between mass and void, and when I say void, I mean something that completes the mass, it can be green, or it should be green. You need to compensate and have a balance between those two factors. So, when it comes to dense typology, you need to think about the void, and then what is in the void? The green. RH: Density is something that is hard to understand. Because in some places you have the perception of density, but when you look at the plot ratio, it is not so dense. A lot of Singapore residential areas, for instance, are only at a plot ratio of about 2.2 or 2.8 which is lower than many cities in Europe which you would think of as low rise and not so dense. If you mention a four-storey urban environment, as you might get in Zurich, you might be in a quite high-density area (in terms of plot ratio). But because you never see so much architecture at one particular time, it does not seem as dense as some areas in Singapore, which feel like they are just jam-packed with high-rise buildings. So, for us dense and green is a combination of two things. One is a certain density of building construction in an area: you feel that you are surrounded © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_2

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by the fabric of the city, as compared to traditional cities or suburban areas. And green building typologies, are ways of incorporating planting into a building that is more than just a few window boxes with terraces here and there. It is a systematic inclusion of vegetation into the concept of the architecture. And in a lot of our work, we are ameliorating density with vegetation. Since density is tied to the amount of architecture in your field of view, that is where we think planting can very much help to make density bearable. TSY: We use the term ‘biophilic architecture’. Simply put, it is about integrating nature and building together. In the traditional way of understanding development, if you reclaim a piece of land—a site, and construct a building on it, the greenery is displaced and lost because the building replaces the green. However, if we can lift the greenery or find a way to relocate it within that building development, then we can balance both the greenery and the built environment. SM: As landscape architects, we probably do not talk so much about building typologies, but we certainly talk about landscape typologies or space typologies. The amount of space could define green buildings, the amount of space on the building, dedicated to external functions. And, a component of that could be the planting area or volume. For me, as a landscape architect, I am interested in landscape spaces having functions. So, the function might be a recreation courtyard, could be an arrival plaza, could be an atrium. I am more interested in that leading into the design rather than just a proportion of building space that is ‘green’.

Chapter 3

Evolution of High-Rise Greenery in Singapore

MK: Could you give me a sense as to how much greenery has grown in Singapore since the onset of your practice and what were the key historical landmarks that have shaped high-density high-green environment? RH: Historically, I think it is more in the context of Lee Kuan Yew’s vision of Singapore as a city in a garden (Fig. 3.1). The landscape was vital to Singapore’s international image and the way it differentiated itself from its neighbours. He said that you cannot fake a garden, that extensive landscaping is something that requires stable institutions and governance. In a way, gardens have been part of Singapore’s marketing for a long time; this is the place you can get things done, and things are looked after. You can build infrastructures, and you can do long-term governance. The good thing is that there is an acceptance within Singapore that gardens are good—a common good—and that they are important. MDH: The Tree Planting campaign launched by Lee Kuan Yew in 1963 was a very meaningful start to the initiatives for a green Singapore. Many others also followed, the installation of the road buffer zones, I think is very effective—the norm of having green zones of a minimum size along roads that also provide security. Over the past 5 years, there have, however, been a few controversial cases of ‘green for green’ where designers come in with these vertical, anecdotal green elements that seem to be added like randomly. I think now the question is how to respect the ideal of green but also offering designs and plantations that makes sense, sustainably.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_3

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Fig. 3.1 View of Singapore Central Business District from Esplanade Park. Credit to Jnzl, https:// flic.kr/p/oTXdt2

FP: Mr. Lee Kuan Yew disliked the tropical heat and humidity. His legacy to us is this green city with plenty of trees for shade. Thus, the city is as green as it is because of his far-reaching vision. In the 20 plus years since Tierra Design was established in Singapore, the city has become a lot greener. With all the progressive environmental enhancement programmes by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the Public Utilities Board (PUB), the National Parks Board (NParks) and the Building & Construction Authority (BCA) in place, there will be much more to come and will include integration of green into buildings, something close to our heart. TSY: An NParks study revealed that between 1986 and 2007, despite the population growing by 68% from 2.7 to 4.6 million, the greenery in Singapore in terms of green coverage has increased from 35.7 to 46.5%. These statistics validated my practice experience since 1992. Some of the dense and green buildings that CPG has undertaken such as NTU School of Art, Design and Media, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Solaris, Gardens by the Bay, etc., have become local landmarks. These are amongst many other examples by fellow Singaporean architects.

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MK: What about the greenery in high-rise buildings? SM: We have certainly seen an increase in the amount of planting on the structure in Singapore. That is because of government policy, and it is because of the widely perceived constraints on land within the City State. That is also heavily driven by this idea of Singapore as a city in a garden. Therefore, urban development, buildings being part of that, need to reflect or express that overarching idea about Singapore as a green place, as a garden place. The city is made more attractive by the scale of its landscape. FP: When Tierra Design began in 1995, the landscape was not emphasised. It was just something where leftover bits were filled in with planting and trees. In place was a green buffer of two to three metres along the boundary lines. This was the extent of the planting when it came to landscape design. Buildings were designed on site and planned without a relationship to the ground, projects were sold off the plan, and there was no real need for landscape architecture design intervention as we know it today, 23 years later. HS: You need to go back a bit earlier than that. The first one I worked on in Singapore was Marina Square in 1983. That was a skyrise greenery type of building where a lot of landscape was put on the upper levels, including all the way up to the top of the Pan Pacific hotel. It was the first time I had ever worked on a project like that; the technology was coming out of America where they were already doing that kind of thing quite commonly. In fact, the design consultants were American. How much that idea got propagated in that era, I would say not all that much. Because buildings that came to follow did not pick up on the idea to the same extent. In these days, it is the most advanced version of those buildings. But buildings like Suntec City, which came in afterwards, had much less green on the building itself. It was green at ground level, but up, not very much, a little bit. And maybe that was the commercial decision made: greenery was not perceived as part of the value of the building. So, for a period after the early 80 s, you saw a decline in the amount of greening. But we, as a practice, did continue working on buildings that have a greening requirement. But it seemed to shrink rather than grow at that time. It was not until the authorities here decided to really change that, and push it in the policy, making the greening, not only into the horizontal city but the vertical city as well. That began the change. And I think, why, maybe the URA here, brought in things like the Landscape Replacement Area (LRA) policy because they realised that if you did not push it, it would not happen. Because commercially, it was not seen as necessary by the commercial sector. SM: I think the classic Singapore public housing estates gives some good examples, where they first stepped up ground carparks into buildings, and then utilised the roofing for open space (Fig. 3.2). It is a straightforward example, but to me, that

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Fig. 3.2 SkyVille parking rooftop garden is one of the latest projects inserting greenery on parking podium. Credit to Michelle Yingying Jiang

seems sensible: you have the basketball court up there, tennis courts or you have gardens. I do not know how old that process has been, but I think they have been doing that for probably 25–30 years. RH: I started my career and my practice in Singapore. Our first project with substantial greenery was Newton Suites, which was completed in 2007 (Fig. 3.3). On that project, we already pushed very hard on how much greenery we could incorporate into the design. We measured it, and it achieved 130% replacement greenery. This means we have more greenery after building the project than if had we left the site empty. And that for us were encouraging results. Because that means it is not just the building that is dense, but the greenery is dense too. So, it is dense greenery rather than green density. And, we have been pushing that proportion ever since: our latest project, the Oasia Hotel Downtown, we have achieved over a 1000% green replacement. More than ten times the site area in terms of green surface, vertical and horizontal surfaces. For us, it is tremendously exciting because it seems you

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Fig. 3.3 Newton Suites is one of the first WOHA projects integrating substantial greenery on the building. Credit to Patrick Bingham-Hall

can, in a way, with one new building, ameliorate ten older buildings around it that perhaps have not had greenery and are not likely to have greenery—and still achieve an overall 100% replacement of green in a city.

Chapter 4

Frameworks and Guidelines Promoting High-Rise Greenery

MK: Could you please explain the role of frameworks like Landscape Replacement Greenery (by URA), Landscape Excellence Assessment Framework (by NParks) and Green Mark (by BCA) and how do they contribute to the design process? (Fig. 4.1) FP: As designers, a mandate to make a place liveable should not be required, as it ought to be engrained in our DNA. But, we are glad to see that these programs are in place to remind us that there is a need to adhere to some design guidelines which would help to enhance our environment. RH: When you look at the plans of NParks, BCA and the URA, and compare them to other cities around the world, they are very progressive. For us, I think we have always been pushing far beyond the envelope, and even surpassed the various frameworks and guidelines. We have been doing things before these programs came in. SM: These are the government agencies responses to broad policies, I understand where they are coming from, and I think it fits into how Singapore wants to promote itself. Various initiatives have been pushed with some more successful than others. For many people into this process, consultants, developers and even government department themselves, it is mainly regulatory exercises. And I think for designers; potentially, it just becomes a kind of straitjacket. We all follow the same process because that is the way to reach the necessary number of points, for certain prescribed criteria. However, you could say policy and standards are necessary because all toilets must flush, fire escapes must be provided and all the doors need to close properly. MDH: In the beginning, we tried to free ourselves from all these regulations. We are Swiss, we follow the rules, we are very disciplined people, but when it comes to creativity, we try to make abstraction from all those things. For example, for Punggol

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_4

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Fig. 4.1 Timeline of key Singapore elevated greenery policies.

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Waterway Terraces, we knew that facing west was not the best orientation, but we questioned it, why not face the west direction? Potentially it can lead to something else, we can generate something else, even if there are few units facing west. So, if you stick to these rules and these regulations, you may, over a certain amount of time remain framed, and generate the same type of answer. That is what I see in these programs because of course, they had to make some regulations. It is the way they work, it is the way it should be, and for sure that is not an issue. But as an architect in a creative field, you need to be able to break some rules during the conceptualisation stage, and then regenerate. If you take something, you need to give something back. It is the kind of balance we try to find within these guidelines (Fig. 4.2).

Fig. 4.2 URA latest greenery guidelines; LUSH 3, released in 2017. Credit to URA

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Landscape Replacement Area (LRA) by Urban Redevelopment Authority HS: The LRA is a different animal altogether. That is policy, and it is to do with a drive to increase the amount of greening that we are doing for replacement of loss of land. You take one hectare of a site; it is gone, never to return, your land has disappeared. The LRA replaces it on the building. Now, we know that the building may not be there forever, but at least we are putting in the necessary spaces to replace. Where we have got to be careful is that LRA to me is to do with usable space, not just green. You take a basketball court away on the ground; you need to have a basketball court on the building. So, you are replacing land that people can go into. People can do things there; they can go up and sit on the roof and get a cup of coffee, sit out on the terrace and have a glass of wine with friends or they can take kids to a play area, so not just planter boxes. So LRA must have a purpose. The purpose is the replacement of usable space in a green environment anywhere on your building. And I think we have not got it yet in that; generally, you would do that when you got space available on your building, which is the lower level. You do not need to replace it on the higher level where people cannot use it very much. A balcony, or a sky garden, I am sceptical about how much they are working. A lot of people do not use them. A lot of buildings do not have them occupied. But the lower levels, where you can produce bigger spaces, are something where you can gain a benefit. That is something that needs to evolve too. But I am a great fan of LRA, I sell it everywhere, including overseas. And, I tell people they should be doing it. I wrote a book for the URA on greening the buildings, and LRA features heavily in the philosophy behind that, saying that it is one of the best things we can do in our city environment. Take away land; you replace it. Your net gain over the years is enormous. FP: LUSH (Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High rises) mandates specific requirement for the replacement of the green space on the ground onto the building. Right now, the requirement is to replicate in some form of greenery, an amount equal to a 100% of the site area. For example, PARKROYAL achieves 200% of green of its site area. We did not have to consult the government agency for permission to do this. Designers should take the lead in the design of sustainable, safely accessible green areas, vertically or horizontally for maintenance, whenever possible. We need not wait for Agencies to tell us to design for accessibility for people of all abilities; for example, the elderly, children and mothers with strollers. Standards have been adopted to remind us to adapt our designs to meet the needs of our society. RH: URA has a broader view, I think some of it is about the green replacement to combat the effects of urban heat islands, but URA is also really interested in visible greenery; they want Singapore to look green. That is the branding of Singapore as a garden city. So, when we submit designs, we have to be mindful of the fact that it is not just functional greenery but also visible greenery which plays an important role. SM: URA’s Landscape Area Replacement policy: what flexibility is there in that process? It seems to me you could ask fundamental questions; are new landscape areas fragmented? How accessible are new landscape spaces? What size and proportion of green space within buildings are useful? What is the maintenance implication of

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green landscape spaces in developments? If green planting landscape is valuable, and I think, for a functional point of view, they certainly can be, at what point are you just adding on more areas or more surfaces to no identified purpose, or discernible benefit? SC: We do have a lot of difficulties trying to hit the 100% LRA criteria. This is for land sales sites. So, for every one square metre, you have in this land, you have to replace it somehow, in the building. And that challenge is compounded by the fact that it becomes costly when you start inserting sky terraces and planters. So, I would say it is challenging, but at the same time, we knew that if we can explain there is a reason why we cannot reach that target, the government would be able to look at it objectively. I do not think it is hard for us to pass the authorities. It is just how we want to make this an integrated element into the building. I was imagining if I would try to get the 100% and I would start doing rows and rows of planters along the façade and the result could be a mess. That is not going to do anyone any good. And, I do not think that is what the government is trying to advocate. They wanted to see the creativeness of this and how designers can integrate it well enough while maintaining it properly though. LEAF Program by National Parks Board HS: NParks sponsor LEAF (Landscape Excellence Assessment Framework), and the purpose of LEAF is to get people to provide a high level of greenery in their projects. To the point that they do not review your project is against their criteria. You review your project against what other people are doing. If someone has got a super green project over here, and you have got a less green project over there, you will probably not win an award, while they will. So, it is favouring those who have taken the plunge in doing exceptionally green projects. We have lost LEAF awards on some projects. We made the application for LEAF award, but we did not win them, because the assessing committee reckoned that our project was not green enough. And that was not necessarily because we did not want to put the green in. It was, perhaps, a product of the architecture being more building focussed and less landscape focussed. So, LEAF is all to do with how green is your project. Green Mark by Building and Construction Authority FP: The Green Mark program encourages development on site and structure for efficient building development, and points are allocated based on equipment, materials and other interventions from the various consultants on the project. The Green Mark program by BCA has two categories, Gold and Platinum. Points are given mainly for the use of efficient mechanical, electrical and sustainable materials but do not encourage the extensive use of rain-water harvesting and auto irrigation for planting. MDH: I feel it is slightly too strict, too rigid. I think what could be better is that to get the Green Mark, you can decide which factor you want to push for. A more social project, a stronger economic project, a greener factor or whatever, and you concentrate on that element. But with the current Green Mark criteria, you need to fulfil everything, and because it is so highly studied, designs often end up the same.

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HS: Green Mark is an environmental consideration, in terms of the environmental effect and the sustainability of what you are doing on the project. So actually, it is less to do with how much greenery you have, but what kind of greenery it is, and what purpose it is serving. I am not a great fan of Green Mark because I think it is relatively arbitrary, and green plot ratio (GnPR) calculation, does not reflect what benefits and value of the greenery are on the building. It is just an arithmetical calculation of your green cover. I am also not a fan of GnPR. I think it is a very suspect calculation and it depends very much on the kind of plant you are using. It makes growth assumptions on how much green cover you are providing. Because in reality, you have to take into account the growth of plants. You cannot make an arbitrary decision saying this tree offers that amount of green, because this tree can start this small and end up that big. So, it is something we do put in, make inputs for Green Mark, and we do our best to achieve these requirements. But the achievement of Platinum Green Mark is not a signal of a high level of sustainability. It is done for marketing reasons. The client wants to have a Green Mark Platinum so that he can put it up there. And we do everything we can to achieve that. That is why I am a bit cynical about Green Mark. I think it has gone a little bit astray, it has become a marketing drive, not the sustainability drive. And the awards are just blasted out all over the city. It needs to be reviewed and looked out again on what is the purpose of all of this and what benefits are we gaining from the Green Mark process. SM: These provisions I am familiar with, including the green plot ratio. I understand where that measure is coming from, but I can tell you that the impact of that is a push to plant ever more densely within unsuitable and constricted spaces to achieve a level of scoring. As you know, plants are living things, so as they develop, you get a situation where they will not all establish because of overcrowding and competition. You are left with a position of having to thin out a lot of planting, much sooner than you should. And overplanting can shade out lower levels of planting causing failure. RH: I think it helps in a general way, in that it gets the whole industry talking about greenery. It means there is a sort of ecosystem of specialist landscape companies who can supply green solutions. There are more people maintaining sky gardens and vertical greenery, which helps to bring the cost down. Green Plot Ratio Dr. Ong Boon Lay originally developed Green Plot Ratio (GnPR) at the National University of Singapore. It intends to assess to what degree a development replaces the greenery present at the site when it was natural vegetation. It does this by presenting the total leaf area as a proportion of the site area. The total leaf area is calculated by multiplying all plant foliage area by a Leaf Area Index (LAI). LAI is dimensionless and corresponds to ‘the one-sided area of leaf tissue per unit ground surface area’. Within GnPR, a plant species LAI is based on it being one of the ten functional types as classified by the National Parks Board (NParks) (Fig. 4.3).

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Fig. 4.3 Green plot ratio computation table. Credit to NParks

GnPR is used across the majority of Singapore’s green building certification schemes. It was first used by the Building & Construction Authority (BCA) as one of the Green Mark criteria and NParks for its LEAF assessment. It has since 2017 been incorporated by URA in its LUSH 3.0 program to ‘introduce a transparent and objective standard for landscaping provided within Landscape Replacement Areas’ (URA 2017). The LUSH guideline sets minimum GnPR requirements for all new developments, differentiating between strategic areas (minimum of 4.0) and outside strategic areas (minimum of 3.0–4.0 depending on the gross plot ratio).

Chapter 5

Examples of Successful Integration of Greenery with Buildings

MK: Which building/s in Singapore or beyond succeeds in integrating greenery and why? SM: It is a good question. I think there is still a sense that the building and the landscape are separate, so you can still see many Singapore buildings where there is a defined façade, and outside of that line, you have a more traditional landscape of pavements, defined planting beds and various sorts of garden structures. Projects that break that down? Water Terraces in Punggol in some senses reflects a traditional approach. We have the building masses rising out of the ground, but at the lower levels, the basement levels, in particular, I think landscape and architectural structure merge much more successfully there. TSY: There are many examples in Singapore. If I am to name one, a more recent example that comes to mind is the PARKROYAL on Pickering Street, designed by the local architecture firm WOHA (Fig. 5.1). The intensity of the greenery; the way the roof terraces and the balconies materialise on the façade of the building; and how the greenery cascades from the high-rise, are all done in such a naturalistic way—not like the typical balcony at all. What I appreciate most is the fact that the People’s Park area has been intensely urbanised, even with Hong Lim Park serving as a spatial relief. If PARKROYAL was designed as a cold, hard monolith, it would have constricted Hong Lim Park even more. Instead, WOHA softened the hotel building facing Hong Lim Park with landscape terraces that drew inspiration from rice paddies—a familiar agricultural and landscape form native to many parts of Asia. As a result, not only have the hotel development achieved its development objectives, it has also enhanced Hong Lim Park, and contributed positively to the urban space in its vicinity. To me, this building has demonstrated that dense and green are not conflicting factors; with creativity, imagination and well-thought design, dense and green can both be achieved holistically. HS: For PARKROYAL, they set out what they wanted, and so did the client to do an exceptional amount of greening on the building. And because the architect was very positive, in his outlook on this, he was able to achieve things that most of the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_5

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Fig. 5.1 WOHA, PARKROYAL on Pickering’s sky gardens, Singapore, 2013. Credit to Patrick Bingham-Hall

other architects have not even tried. So, when you get that combination of a client that wants to do it, an architect who has got the knowledgeability and willingness to do it, then you get that kind of things happening. Which is way in excess of what anybody else has done? Khoo Teck Puat Hospital was similar. Again, you had a client who drove the agenda extremely hard. You were dealing with an architect who at that time was not particularly well known for his greening. But once the ball started rolling, it rolled. And then, you get the excellent contractor coming in. I met the client representative, and he said: eventually, the landscape architect did some sketch of it, but the rest was all done by the contractor who was so excited by what he was doing. He just brought the jungle in and planted it. And, the whole thing worked exceedingly well. So, you get the converted architect, a decent landscape architect and a cracking contractor, with a highly motivated client, you will get Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. But it has been noted that phase 2 of Khoo Teck Puat Hospital is not even remotely like phase 1. Because that formula was not there. Just wait for the next round of hospitals to come up, that have the same drivers, and you will get those things happening. Nobody has built anything like Khoo Teck Puat since that time. RH: I like the greenery in Khoo Teck Puat (Fig. 5.2). Especially, the farming on the top is something that is deeply integrated with the users of the building, the ideas of wellness, of fresh vegetables, so I think that is an excellent one.

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Fig. 5.2 Urban farm on the rooftop of Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore. Credit to Ester Jun-Yu Suen

SC: I would say Vivo City. Look at the roof up there (Fig. 5.3). Although there is not much greenery, it seems to be filled up with people. Of course, it is because of the activity-generating spaces. Unfortunately going back to PARKROYAL, it is just hotel rooms. And I may not be using a good example, but I probably wanted to point out that to make spaces successful, it just needs activity-generating characteristics. And in Vivo City, though I would love to see a bit more of the greenery than what they have there, you get a right amount of people flowing into that space. MDH: I would say Marina Barrage because I always see a lot of people on the roof when I pass by, so it seems that it is really working socially (Fig. 5.4). Differently, I would mention the SOTA (School of The Arts) by WOHA. Not because of the vertical greenery, but because of the way they have integrated the old trees into the building. It is hard to play with void and mass as I said. So, I like how the void and these trees, old trees, have been kept on site, even becoming the main facade facing the park and participating in the whole project. SM: Travelling outside Singapore, in Seoul, the Zaha Hadid cultural centre Dongdaemun Design Plaza (Fig. 5.5). It does not immediately spring to mind because the landscape is more of a cultural kind of expression with layers of previous archaeology exposed in that project. But she has been an architect that has probably expressed more than many that the architecture as fabric and the landscape can be integrated. D’Leedon, the residential project in Singapore, is another one where they as architects seemed to pursue that. The ultimate expression of the towers perhaps did not fully realise the original concept, but the architecture is probably most expressive

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Fig. 5.3 Children playing with water on the roof of Vivo City, Singapore. Credit to Syauqee Mohamad https://flic.kr/p/5UtuUn

Fig. 5.4 Kites flying from Marina Barrage, Singapore. Credit to Walter Lim https://flic.kr/p/ 8uoBuM

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Fig. 5.5 Dongdaemun Design Plaza by Zaha Hadid, Seoul. Credit to Nestor Lacle, https://flic.kr/ p/mvzooc

Fig. 5.6 D’Leedon by Zaha Hadid, Singapore. Credit to ICN Design International

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in that project where it becomes horizontal, where it becomes landscape (Fig. 5.6). Their expressive lines and how they define spaces are quite something to see. In Paris, the Francois Mitterrand library, where I was quite impressed with the podium, how the streetscape blends into it. The precinct feels open, dropping into the dramatic courtyards. The glazed façades of the building create that feeling that the landscape is drawn into the building although physically it is quite orthogonal and distinct.

Chapter 6

Design Process That Leads to Dense and Green Buildings

MK: Could you highlight critical aspects of the design process, while emphasising decisions that lead to dense and green building typologies? SM: As landscape architects, we have a desire to act and have an impact on the city scale, not just a single site, or single building. I think landscape draws on agricultural history as much as on urban design history and so landscape can, but does not necessarily need to, be trees and shrubs. The city is a ‘landscape’, a large area that is also made of networks of roads and pavements. Could they benefit from having additional elements like plants and trees? Of course, they can, but it does not necessarily mean that they have to. There are plenty of dynamic streets and active public spaces in Hong Kong without any trees. Certainly, plenty of European cities have lanes with active frontages of buildings, making a lively environment, which I would class as ‘landscape’. And there are few trees and no shrubs there. To come back to your question, I think the first thing is that all these projects are space driven. It is about understanding the sequence and scale of spaces. The interaction between public and private, between what is commercial and what is more democratic or shared space. And then with that in mind, understanding what drives the development. I look for the elements that make a space active: how do people kind of wander through space, is it just about circulation or people are going to populate the area for recreation purposes or some other things? That to me can give the landscape meaning, and that can drive the design. Then consider elements including green, trees and softscape that create a specific character. Fundamentally, I start with the space planning then move to define amenities and facilities, then character and treatment in materials and softscape. FP: Dense and green building typologies provide an opportunity for landscape architects to make places they design more liveable both on the building and also on its site. It is about the contextual understanding of the architecture and structural capabilities

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_6

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because in land-scarce Singapore many buildings are built above a car park structure. What we can do to is to push for a specific design expression, which may emphasise a dense and green environment. But we must have an excellent team since it is all about cooperation and having other consultants buy into the concept. Ultimately, the client is the key decision maker since there are land and building costs pegged to how well the project sells. It does, therefore, take a lot of people working together to make green intervention happen. Working mainly with good designers helps as it makes it so much easier for us to introduce ideas into the project. Ultimately, if the design is well detailed and built, with risks removed, the greenery will be safely accessible for maintenance. Through experience, designers are able to determine that it is well worth doing and therefore incorporate it into the building. HS: Maybe you should look at the less exemplary projects, first, the one where they are a little bit reluctant to embrace this. We as a company, tend to review the kind of project when we are bidding. And if we feel the project is dry and is never going to go anywhere, we tend not to bid for them. But we do go into projects where the client is sort of not quite sure which direction he is going to go in. We would then tend to take a fairly aggressive stance at that point, to try to get the architect, the engineer,—a reason for engineers is that we have to get them on our side for structural reasons for the greening—and persuade the client that he should do more. So, we would always take that view, to try to increase the amount of, not just greening, but of the whole matter of incorporating the greenness into the structure. And the cost. Because the cost will always drive the client’s vision. We would often get cost stripping out while we are trying to put green elements in. So, there is a battle here too. That is just the ongoing battle we always fight in every project. RH: I think with our early buildings; we certainly did not have clients who came to us and say do a green building. So, we had to propose such a way that the developer saw that the greenery is something that tied in very closely to the objectives of his project. And in every case when we have done it, it has been seen as an expression of the drivers and objectives of the project, and as such the client could identify with it and say yes, that is offering me something that suits the drivers. So, it could be a residential project, where naturally you saw that it would stand out and be more attractive to the buyers compared to a typical project. Something new to the market or some aspects of wellness, something that you can talk about that will appeal to the end users. For instance, at the PARKROYAL Hotel on Pickering, the garden is something where they can hold functions and events. It expands the kinds of business opportunities that they can offer to their corporate clients. So that is why we have always tried to make the greenery something that end users would engage with a lot. And, it can also be seen as something positive and offering new experiences in the city.

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SC: I do not think much has changed. I think it is still that process of communication with clients and consultants. In terms of the design process, nothing has changed to me. We talked about typologies; we talked about how the government leads it. You have heard about the bay windows. The bay windows that we have, a lot of them were created when URA was allowing Gross Floor Area (GFA) exemption. And for a while, we had a lot of these buildings that were created with these boxes, protrusion from the façade. But when that was taken away, our building came back to where it was before this GFA exemption, without these protrusions. Let us say, these sky terraces were going to be counted GFA, and not exempted as today, that would change quite a lot. I would imagine that quite a number of clients would flee away from it. It is going to be a maintenance issue; it is going to be a hassle; it is going to deepen my beams, add more loads to my building. That is what I probably would fear. That if we do not have these initiatives and requirements by the government, we will lose these sky terraces. Of course, it seems to contradict to what I was saying just now, but I was hoping that without all these initiatives and requirements, enlightened developers would be able to see more than just meeting requirements or obtaining GFA exemption and that it benefits occupants with having breakout spaces turned into sky terraces and roof terraces. HS: One of our fundamental philosophy on design is that design is not just about a fancy concept; it is about fusing your concept with your technical and practical requirements. And that must start on day 1. You have got to start thinking practical, (no comma) right at the beginning of the whole process. You have got to begin taming yourself to some degree or tempering your enthusiasm with the practical considerations. That goes down to maintenance as well. It is knowing cladding requirements, looking at engineering constraints as well as coming with all the grand ideas that you have. So that is a robust design methodology. We do not allow ourselves to get caught up in the dreamland that does not also take account of the practicalities that we will have to face, throughout both our design and construction stages. And for the guys who must then look after that building for the next 20 years. So, we must also think about those guys early on. We found things about our design that did not work well over the years. And we had to come back and rethink some of it—for example, the drainage of planter boxes. We thought we had it nailed in the early days, but there have been so many problems with the methodologies we have used. We have now done new thinking about how that should be done effectively on a roof deck. That has to do with long term maintenance. I get phone calls from property managers 7–8 years after we finish the project: ‘we think we’ve got a lot of problems with block drains, our roots have got into the drains, what do we do?’ We have to help those people when it happens because we cannot just leave that alone. We have got to go and deal with it, even though it was years ago, and it is not paying us anymore. Because if we do not learn from that particular problem and work out how to deal with it, everybody is losing. So, the demands of the clients, design architect, landscape contractors, operations teams; all of them influence the way we design.

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TSY: To design a building endowed with greenery, one needs to consider the sustainability factor. You have to, first of all, understand the plant type; this entails studying and understanding the conditions required for the plant to thrive. Second, you have to think about the maintainability of the green feature and accessibility for maintenance. Thirdly, you need to know the return on investment. If you install a roof garden that is inaccessible; or the building occupants do not know it exists or does not use it, in the socio-sustainability sense, it renders the roof garden unsustainable. After putting in so much effort and investing so much capital in this greenery, if people do not use it, it is likely to deteriorate. The building owner may subsequently decide to convert it to other uses. It’d be quite a pity. MK: While designing such unique building typologies, what parameters of the surrounding neighbourhood should be incorporated into the design process? MDH: We always work considering the context, what is the benefit of our project towards the context? Singapore, as a city, was born in a way, I know it is very particular, close to a tabula rasa situation. Somehow it is very drastic, a very consistent way of building and rebuilding. It is natural, and we try to take advantage of these contrasts. In Switzerland, it is the exact opposite of what we can do here. The context there, the 10 cm difference between one building and another is crucial. We are familiar with these variations of contexts, which can be the cultural, political, social or natural. Of course, it is good to generate a green yard or a sky park, but how does it interact with the surroundings? How do you extend the existing green, how can you generate a connection between this park and this forest? How can you answer the local conditions, like water features, like the canal in Punggol? These are the real questions. And the designers’ answer should generate space to context, like the urban form that we generated to answer to the Punggol site. TSY: In high-density developments, it is essential to leverage on ‘borrowed’ spaces from the surrounding context. In the case of the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) located next to the Yishun Pond Park, our architects adopted the concept of ‘Hospital in a Garden, Garden in the Hospital’. By organising the hospital complex around a central garden, it then creates the opportunity to spatially connect the hospital’s central garden with the neighbouring Yishun Pond Park. Besides, the transition between the hospital garden and the Yishun Pond Park is intentionally layered, blurred, and seamless, as a result, it is natural for the users of the Yishun Pond Park to stroll to KTPH’s central garden or use its amenities such as the food court serving healthier food choices. Likewise, the spatial and visual connection also invites KTPH workers, visitors and others to enjoy the Yishun Pond Park (Fig. 6.1).

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Fig. 6.1 Khoo Teck Puat Hospital seen from Yishun Pond, Singapore. Credit to CPG Consultants

RH: It has a bearing on it in terms of how the landscape in the surroundings drives the landscape in the building. We have done some masterplans where we have taken the broader surroundings of the plot into account during the design process. And in our new book Garden City Mega City, we established the idea of an urban ecosystem scoring, where you would get points for connecting sky gardens to the surrounding urban landscape or other sky gardens in other developments.

Chapter 7

Typology of Greenery and Its Integration

MK: How do you differentiate between accessible or esthetical greenery? What should be the preferred design strategy of integrating greenery into buildings and why? RH: I think we have come up with a kind of toolbox, or a colouring pencil set, of different ways of doing greenery. We apply various methods quite naturally now; is it a green façade, is it a creeper wall, is it a sky garden? That has become a vocabulary of planting solutions, when you are right at the beginning, sketching out and working out massing of the building. It is becoming one of the drivers of what you can do. Particularly in Singapore, for instance, where there are regulations about sky gardens that must have a 45° line. As you are playing with the building, you are going ‘oh there is a 6 m garden here, so it must have at least 6 m height for that space’. It just becomes part of the way you need to work. Same with the depth that you need for soil, for different plants and gardens. We are also factoring that right from the beginning. We think about access to light because plants are living things and some of their ‘food’ is light, so we think about how to get light into there and for how many hours, and whether it is going to grow or not. That is something that also affects the way we mass out the project. SM: Landscape needs to be grounded in some programme and function. So naturally, I want green areas to be accessible. But while architecture has aspects of the decorative, expressing ideas, status or some other agendas, I think for landscape too; it should be about attraction and aesthetics. I think there are aspects of the landscape to be just looked at. The etymology of ‘landscape’ is more rooted in the idea of something to look at. You know the classic kind of touristic, beautiful scenery. But for me as a designer, I am looking for a landscape to deliver something functional. And by functional, not necessarily so actual food production, agriculture or forestry, but more in terms of amenities, lifestyle, recreation or health. So, I think the broad accessibility issue is essential, or more important from a design point of view.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_7

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Fig. 7.1 PARKROYAL parking seen from Eu Tong Sen Street, Singapore. Credit to Tony Hisgett https://flic.kr/p/R1g3gg

RH: Well, I do not think there should be a designer preference. I think it is that toolbox again. The landscape can perform all these kinds of functions, which functions are appropriate in which case depends on the brief, on the client, on the budget. That is why for instance we are looking at these low maintenance gardens. We see this as mainly performative greenery, to combat urban heat islands and dust or enhance biodiversity, etc. That could be happening up on the roof, you do not see it, you do not care about it, but at a citywide level, these gardens would have a massive impact. Other gardens, which people get to enjoy, might be more intensively maintained. They may be mostly aesthetic but perform those other functions as a sort of bonus. Within one project we may have eight different types of greenery installations, and if you have to pick which of those functions they perform, each one might be slightly different. For instance, at the PARKROYAL, our car park has planters that are designed to cascade over the edge, so the people in the cars may have a moment of enjoyment seeing some plants as they are parking (Fig. 7.1). But the number one performance of it is that people can enjoy it from the street , walking past, in the park. So, it is not

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very accessible, it is not a garden you may spend time in, but it is performing well from the enjoyment at a distance, and from another point of view, it may perform well on mitigating the effects of urban heat islands, pollutants, etc. HS: We should assume that all greenery has its specific aesthetic value, even a planter box on the perimeter. We try to create more than that on these landscape environments. And I mentioned a usable landscape. The URA LRA demands 100% replacement, but 60% of that can be hardscape, 40% softscape, as a guide. That means you must have more than just an edge planter. So, if you did the badminton court, for example, you would need to put planting around it, to make it more beautiful, and also just in case, the shuttlecock goes outside the court. You do not want it dropping 24 storeys down. So, yes there is a move to increase the amount of green, so it is not just a strip around the edge. Also, we have to take into account the occupant load. The occupant load relates to fire safety and how people can get off the roof if it happens to be a fire in the building. It determines how we can design to control the number of people who can get onto and off a roof. In other words, you cannot have an open lawn, where you can get 150 people having a party in an area that does not have sufficient staircase to get them out. The way we do it is to elevate the planting and to have your planting designed in such a way that people cannot use it. You talk about accessible greenery. For occupant load purposes, we make it inaccessible. Visual only, forming spaces, defining spaces, creating a green environment, but you cannot go and sit in it. So that is done on purpose, to control the number of people that can come onto a roof. Occupant load combined with LRA is a very complicated formula, and we have to work with it the whole time to try and keep our LRA up but our occupant load down. So, generally, as a landscape designer, we would try to maximise the greenery. And occupant load has in a way been our friend because it forced us to put more greenery. But LRA tends to go the other way because they want usable community spaces. So, we have to do both. Eventually, our mathematics must converge, so that occupant load and LRA meet and provide a satisfactory answer. Usually, that means more greenery, which is good. MDH: At the very early stages of our process, we try to name things; what is this space and what character do we want to give it? We develop what we call a poetic identity; this is a palm pit; this is a jungle courtyard; this is a rice field… Sometimes it is a bit naïve but, in the end, it helps us to make decisions, to say ok we are going in this direction. Of course, there are other parameters: the shading, the functional aspects, etc., but if you have that kind of poetic reference to come back to, a strong identity reference, that helps you to move forward with consistent design choices. Sometimes I am a bit, not shocked, but surprised at the way public housing or other departments dissect greenery ‘this is one planter, this one is 45 cm, this one is 60…’. It reduces the green elements to some data, numbers that you need to count to get the Green Mark. I think greenery is more than that. I talked previously about the transfer of ambience and identity, and the green ingredients help that. It was our

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Fig. 7.2 Design concept of Punggol Waterway Terraces, Singapore. Credit to G8A

first idea at the origin of the rice paddy field for Punggol (Fig. 7.2). Of course, the structure is not a rice field; it is a housing block. But if we use some poetic and strong identity approach, it makes the project more understandable, more local, easier to be accepted, understood and finally appropriated by the people. This process is an important strategy that we try to develop in all of our projects. FP: It depends on what we are trying to do with this greening. Most of the time just being able to see the planting is proper, but for many, it is better to have a physical connection and be genuinely able to be in the space itself. So how do we accomplish this? It takes excellent planning and an understanding of how to create environmental conditions that are great for plants. Sometimes we do not even need to have natural light as artificial lighting can be introduced for the plants to create environments within the interior spaces. 158 Cecil Street is an example where we introduced walls of planting to the existing structural framework of its interior sevenstorey atrium to create a very green internal environment (Fig. 7.3). This allowed previously unrentable office spaces to be leased out immediately after the intervention of vertical greenery for all seven storeys! There was now not only directly usable patio space on two levels but also views of the vertical seven-storey greenery. HS: The ideal is, if we had an architect who was into this all thing, your building would contain all of them. Because your edge balcony, your rooftop garden, your podium garden, your sky bridge, can all take place in one building. We have buildings that have all of them. So, at your sky garden, actually, sky garden tends to be something that is within the footprint of the building, so in other words, it is covered. Whereas for a roof garden, it is generally on a deck, so it is out in the open, and natural daylight will look after it. A car park podium garden which is known as the Landscape Deck in URA terminology is also a garden, but it is on top of a car park. It is a roof garden, but it has a particular formation, which contains something like a swimming pool,

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Fig. 7.3 Interior greenery at 158 Cecil Street, Singapore. Credit to Tierra Design

which affects the layout of the car park beneath. But nowadays we are trying to do what we call the sandwich, which is the upper deck and the structural roof, car park underneath is deep enough, so you do not have a structural problem. Everything is done in just two levels. But the typology I am less keen on, (no comma) is the vertical green, the green wall. We are phasing out green walls. As a designer, we are advising people not to do a green wall. Because they are expensive, costly. They are very wasteful on resources, they are difficult to manage, and many of them are not successful. If they are successful, it is because they are getting an over-huge amount of maintenance, which is extremely expensive: expensive to build, costly to maintain. And they are just decoration, and they do not serve any function. They are like a painting on the wall or a wall cladding. So that does not mean we do not do vertical greening, but we do it by using climbing plants which grow up vertically. And they do it on their own, and it does not require any expensive structure. Like the Oasia, that is an excellent example of climbing plants doing all your vertical greening (Fig. 7.4). So green wall no, but vertical greening was done sensibly and sustainably, yes. MDH: In the way of integration, we try to plant as much as we can on true ground, to take full advantage of the present greenery. That is very important. I mean if you have the chance to plant on the true ground, and it gives the effect and the space that you want, do it! Do not always try to make these exceptional sky bridges, these

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Fig. 7.4 Oasia Hotel Downtown’s green wall, Singapore. Credit to Patrick Bingham-Hall

cantilevers, where you need a considerable amount of steel to carry all these very fancy things. It is better to be a bit more rational in a way. If you go in this elaborate direction, bringing the greenery to a higher level, it takes a lot of energy, which is usually contradictory to what the design is about. You always need to be sure that the green is part of the project, that it is not just a decoration, something you are adding on the top to make it feel like ‘Ah I’m green!’ If you do, if you integrate elements like green terraces, you need to have an evident concept, a justification. Then, of course, comes to the question of structure which is costly, structure and concrete is a big part of the construction cost, and this greenery on top will also influence that.

Chapter 8

Use of Framework and Guidelines During Design

MK: What kind of guidelines and frameworks could be used for such typologies? Highlight the respective benefits and challenges? Any government schemes (in Singapore), which may influence the selection of plant species? TSY: Guidelines are being revised regularly, and some can be specific to the region of the developments. For example, there are a couple of guidelines drawn up by URA about the Jurong East area. That’s why we have to stay in touch with the guidelines, be it a national guideline or a regional guideline. Guidelines such as the amount of roof terrace a building can have or adhere to the 45° envelope can provide either inspiration or constraints. Singapore has formulated various policies and guidelines that positively impact dense and green buildings, for example, URA’s LUSH Programme, NParks’ Skyrise Greenery Incentive Scheme and PUB’s Active, Beautiful, Clean Programme. They are very comprehensive and are accepted industry wide. In CPG, we do formulate our stepped approach to biophilic design. The first, essential step is to create or sustain a visual connection with natural features. This draws the people from its conditioned urban environment to establish a relationship with nature. The second step is to optimise the use of natural light, natural ventilation, water features and other natural patterns into the interiors of the building. The third step is to connect the interior and exterior physically and seamlessly, to create opportunities for inhabitants to enjoy the exterior more easily. MDH: When we started the Punggol Waterway competition, we did not know anything about the Housing and Development Board (HDB) regulations. I was not afraid of that because in Switzerland, there are thousands and thousands of guidelines as well. And actually, they were proper regulations that influenced the design. For example, all of the plant species close to the residential area should not attract mosquitoes, which of course is good, especially as we were not aware of these different specificities. Then when it came to regulations like the percentage of shade that you need to provide on the landscaped deck. It influenced and changed a little what we had in mind in the beginning, so we had to search for alternatives. However, it did not change the concept or the founding ideas, though admittedly it changed a little bit © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_8

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the details of what we had envisioned. But the meaning, the identity, the idea of the space remained the same. SM: International guidelines? America, for instance, they have the classic kind of environmental building standards that you eluded to, LEED and in the UK, BREEAM. But they are very architecture focused. They have a component of the landscape, but it is more of a peripheral feature rather than a fundamental one. So, in some ways, Singapore probably does have some standards a little bit more targeted in that area. Do we follow them? Yes, we do, but again we like to experiment in terms of plant species that we think would work perhaps a bit better. We are looking for variety or diversity sometimes. I think the challenge is not so much on the standards of design, and I think the challenge in Singapore relates to the implementation and installation. RH: I do know there is this Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology (CUGE), which has been publishing some guidelines. I think that information is more channelled through our landscape consultants, who have a lot of experience and knowledge. They have tried things out to know which plants are more wind resistant than others. But for us, the general idea with plants in skyrise greenery is that it tends to have higher winds. Plants there has greater transpiration speed, because of these increased winds. And seaside plants evolve well in these high wind high exposure situations. Plants that grow in the alpine or hilly mountainous environment are also often exposed to these winds. HS: You know CUGE is the NParks research branch. They produce these booklets, and I sit on one of the editorial committees for doing those. I have just done one with them that was looking at the logic of choosing tree species suitable for planting on roofs. Because now that has become a safety issue since some people are trying to grow giant trees on the roof garden, which is not good. You need to stop people from doing that by giving them guidelines on how you select plant material. Trees that naturally grow to a small size and have a less aggressive root system are ideal. The criterion is only this; that you are able to walk underneath the tree, not hitting your head on the branches. Anything above 2 m for branching, and then 3 m of foliage is good enough for a roof garden 5–6 m. And NParks is now starting to lay that down as a requirement. So big trees on the roof, no more. And very sensible, I am supportive. SM: Certain plant selections are more or less risky than others. Again, as a designer, you want to use plant material to create space by their bulk, mass or form. Or enhance the experience of a place by the characteristics of a planting palette, whether it is fragrance, colour, texture or whatever else. As designers, we are also aware that we are designing with living elements, in the real world, so things need to work practically. There is no point having beautiful species, used in inappropriate places, such as perched up on the edge of the building if you know that it is intolerant, for example, it will simply not survive. To return to your question, probably NParks is the primary agency with some guidelines for plant species. The HDB has internal standards, with principles of planting. Town Councils, the agencies in charge of the maintenance of public housing estates in Singapore, probably do not have any

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formalised standards but they certainly have an opinion based on their operational requirements. BCA and URA are focused on strategic, urban scale and building standards. What I found amazing though, is that Singapore, in all the places I have lived in the world is probably the most sensitive about water usage, and yet we have extensive planting areas, some not even sustained by direct rainfall, and plants require water! Who has quantified plant species that use less water? I think that it is currently a very inexact area of knowledge. NPark’s publications indicate basic symbols for assumed plant species water usage. That, therefore, does not mean very much. Again, we are left with landscape consultants’ personal experience of species: ‘this one is pretty tolerant of dry conditions, but don’t use that one, it does require a lot of water to flourish’. So that is something that could be improved. The technical studies to evaluate plant water usage has only ever been done with agricultural plants I think. HS: On the question of drought tolerant plants, that is a very subjective issue. What is exactly a drought tolerant species? When does ‘drought’ apply? Plants that need less water are what we should be looking for. Certain plants require a lot of maintenance and a lot of watering and will not survive if for some reason your irrigation system did not work, or it did not rain.

Chapter 9

Challenges During Construction and Post-occupancy Observations

MK: What makes designing of dense and green buildings different than building as usual? What are the challenges for the integration of greenery into various buildings, based on functionality? HS: Structure, logistics, maintenance, management, all throw up things we have to deal with and see it through the end. Nowadays, there are very few buildings that are simple, even a small condominium with an underground car park or landscape deck, for example. There is a lot of complexity in that. That goes right across all the disciplines, with everybody dealing with everything from structural loading to drain discharges. Where to site the mechanical–electrical system, where to put the rubbish bin? Everybody is involved you know. We are never taking a piece of land and sticking a single building on it. Here is a land, build a bungalow. We hardly ever do that these days. Everything now has become multilevel, multidiscipline, multifaceted. RH: There are different types of challenges, some are technical challenges, and others are spatial challenges: making sure that you have enough soil depth, figuring out where the drainage runs, if there is an irrigation system, working out how it functions in a high-rise building. Another challenge that we have been improving on is that plants follow the water and tend to block drainage outlets. We realised that if it gets choked by the roots of the plants, it becomes challenging to access, so we started moving all our drainage points outside of our sky gardens. This way you can always inspect and see the drainage points very easily. There are also only certain kinds of waterproofing which are root resistant, some tree roots may rip standard systems off within a year and cause waterproofing problems. There are issues of wind and anchoring large trees to the structure, so if there is a storm, it would not potentially lift them out of the building and drop them down to the street. With the wind environment, you can also get funnelling effects. Even though Singapore has a very low wind at high levels. If you have two massive faces of a building and a small

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_9

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opening, the wind will accelerate to 20 km or 60 km an hour through that opening while the rest of it is only 2 km an hour. These are things that you need to think about as you go through. I think it helps to be a gardener yourself and think about how plants respond. People do not realise how much plants battle with each other for light. You might have something that looks beautiful on day 1, but 6 months later, some plants have become more dominant and caused others to die back. Just understanding that they are going to keep changing over time and need constant maintenance can be something that building owners do not expect if they have not been through it. It is similar to landscaping on the ground; it is just that when plants are placed on a building, somehow people seem to find it surprising, difficult or unexpected that they behave similarly to when they are in a ‘regular’ garden. So, we always try to take people through the process. MDH: Of course, when it comes to affordable housing, the biggest challenge is the relationship between the structure and the weight. When you want to have real trees, not shrubs, but real greenery, you need to take into account the structure, and of course, there is a lot of constraints on that. Cost is a big factor with these structural questions. The higher you want to go, the more it costs. SM: The scale and location of green planting areas on the building structure. And the building operations, how these prime functions can coexist with the necessary regular management and maintenance required to establish and nurture living landscapes. There is an expectation in Singapore that landscape will be instant; putting in the biggest trees, you can. But from a practitioner’s point of view, we know that smaller trees establish quicker and better. When they push out their roots, they form better root connections with the soil. Then, their growth is consequently better, unlike massive transplanted trees. It would be like moving a two-year-old and shifting an 80-year-old. The two-year-old is much more flexible and adaptable than the 80-yearold. That is the same with trees. Older trees might remain static, but they are unlikely to flourish in the same way. But some developers and perhaps even residents have expectations that trees are fixed in their eventual state and unchanging. Of course, it is not the case. FP: Bosco Verticale, in Milan, achieves its lushness on all levels because the greenery is maintained by the association of owners (Fig. 9.1). Access for maintenance crews is an important issue. This may create logistical problems because people value privacy. Maintenance crews must enter the verandas of units regularly to tend to the greenery. Other logistical issues to consider are that not everyone is attuned to the concept of greening. Some even express their annoyance for leaf litter or do not like insects. However, if greening a building is deemed to have commercial value, developers will capitalise on the opportunity and will want it included in the building design. HS: In the Marina Bay Sands, they have got planting on every single level going all the way up on the entire height of the building (Fig. 9.2). I am not saying that this was so successful, because what they wanted to do was not achieved. That comes down to maintenance because it is challenging to maintain greenery on a hotel room

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Fig. 9.1 Softscape parts of the balconies in Bosco Verticale belong to and are maintained by the association of owners, Milan. Credit to Michelle Yingying Jiang

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Fig. 9.2 Green balconies on Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Credit to Henry Burrows, https://flic. kr/p/EWqti6

balcony. Simply because the rooms are occupied. And when does the guy go into clip the shrubs? So, there are arguments for and against the vertical part of this question. I think, as with mountain, your greenery becomes less and less the higher you go up. And perhaps that is the lesson we should learn, do not try to put greenery where greenery cannot merely be looked after. SM: I think from a landscape point of view, and I am talking now about the green and living aspect of the landscape, Singapore is potentially creating some environments that are less sustainable. Some green walls, the way they are designed and executed within the city, do not sustain themselves. Green roofs can be a bit different, but where the building envelope is more constricted, and light levels are much reduced, even planted areas open to the sky, may not sustain on their own and need other elements like grow lights and artificial irrigation to survive. That seems to me possibly entirely self-defeating in the longer term. Developers may spend a lot of money implementing these things that may or may not make these developments look better or even look more planted. But whether that has a longer-term payback in terms of their investment or the money that is required to operate and maintain it, is unclear. Having some data on that would be beneficial. We have heard accounts of, developments/buildings that need to be replacing plants on green walls every 2–3 weeks, where scaffolding is a semi-permanent feature on some shopping malls to replace things that have not established or died. We certainly see plenty of examples where water features are turned off, and plants are just being stripped out and replaced with hard surfaces. That is not good for anyone!

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RH: I think many architects are not gardeners themselves and so they tend to treat greenery as a material, which they apply to an elevation or a façade, without thinking of it as a living, growing, changing a thing and something that needs a lot of maintenance and access. We have seen projects with very labour-intensive green wall systems. For instance, systems with the soil all the way at the top, which you can only access via boom lift or gondolas. Those systems are going to be problematic with regards to maintenance. They can look quite spectacular, but these kinds of walls are in some way like permanent flower arrangements, so they need a lot of care. A very high-maintenance facade needs constant attention from people and specialist equipment to look as it does on the rendering of a presentation. This is why we are very interested in low-maintenance and low-cost systems. I think it is partly a problem with Singapore, people here have a particular vision of greenery, which is very manicured, exceptionally maintained, often highly decorative, lots of colours, foliage or patterns. Many people tend to see the wild landscape as a problem like it is something that is not maintained. But I think a lot of the benefits of greenery are obtained through simple, hardy, tough plants, plants that you, ideally, hardly have to maintain at all. These have the most excellent chance of longevity. MDH: We have also had a lot of problems in Vietnam and other countries where the maintenance or follow up of the design was not really insured. So, we came up with this idea of ‘sustainable ruin’, which means that in Vietnam your building, in three years, will already be old. It will look old, because the maintenance has not been there, because the weather is so harsh and because the client, often, has changed the function of the space. Sometimes you have not even completed the building when they have already changed what is to be inside! So, we try to create organisms that have a maximum amount of flexibility. For instance, we put the skeleton outside, to avoid the structure to be inside and to create the most flexible space. And then the structure becomes shading also, without any specific or any delicate shading. Because you know that the maintenance will not be there. So even if you remove the window, if you remove everything in this building, the structure itself can survive and keep its primary function. The landscape and greenery also participate in this strategy. The entire project becomes an organism and becomes a sustainable ruin, and it addresses context and supplies the flexibility, the shading and the natural ventilation.

Chapter 10

Planning and Conducting Integrated Design Charrettes

MK: Could you explain design methodology which balances between the demands of clients, designers, landscape contractor and operations team? SC: It would start with the client, and together with us as lead consultants and architects, having a vision of what we want our building to be. We would have the landscape consultants aligning and developing the vision and providing the palettes of colours and plants. With that process, I would say that we respect the landscape consultants quite a fair bit in the local context here and would give them almost a free rein unless the client has an intense interest in the plants that he or she prefers. But most of the time, we see the landscape vision coming up from landscape consultants. That would, of course, go onto a few more refinements and the practicality of spaces. But I think the tricky parts come in the decision over some of the plants or trees that would affect the structure. The structure is something that is very heavy, and if you have plants that require a deep bed of soil, architects will have to start balancing. For example, high ceiling space required for particular tenants may affect the depth of the planters, of the soil bed. Then, we have to come back to the landscape designers and question the proposed 1000 mm of soil depth. Could it be possible at 900 mm? We would be fighting over those depths. I mean I would not be sure as to whether the reduction of 100 mm would matter for a particular plant, but I would rather be on the safe side to say: ‘eh if you need to have the roots to grow properly, let’s have the 1000 mm’. So that to me, that act of crystallisation, is the most challenging part in that process of putting green. After which, we would go down towards tendering and getting the contractors on board. But once the contract is on board, indeed it is all about the technicalities of the materials and the implementation. That really should not be that much of an issue, it is getting back to the quality of the contractor, whether they are eager to implement these requirements in the contract properly. SM: Sequence and balance. Try to address and agree on the fundamental issues first and make the big design moves early. Then, work through the statutory and technical matters as one moves through the project design process. Initially, the client and the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_10

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architect are the key parties to design decisions. But as an experienced designer, we bring our knowledge and experience of procurement, installation, establishment and management to the table early on. So, we are highlighting the implications of our design to address the following requirements of contractors and operations too. I am working on projects at the moment, and we have had to work pretty hard with architects to help them to appreciate this idea of active frontages. That we do not want all blank walls facing onto adjacent landscape spaces, because then it fosters dead space. We push to try to get them to have food courts and retail, foyers and conciergetype functions opening up onto a decent amount of external space, so the people can appreciate the green view, but also come outside, gather outside, eat outside and circulate outside. To us, there must be a good relationship between the architecture, the building and the landscape or the external spaces. I am sometimes surprised we have to still make these arguments, what to us seem fairly basic considerations. HS: Interlace was an exciting project because we had an architect who was highly motivated in the greening aspect of his overall design. So, we were able to engage with them at a very positive level, literally the very first time we ever met them. And that went all the way through the project. It never disappeared because the client was equally motivated all the way through. But it does not mean you lack challenges, because a complex multiform group of buildings of that scale is just full of challenges. But even an architect who is motivated sometimes has constraints that fight against the landscape. We then have to fight back, not fighting aggressively but fighting to keep it. TSY: At CPG, we employ an integrative design process through a series of design workshops, focusing on a variety of design aspects. The stakeholders of these workshops are from various disciplines; there are consultants, users, project managers from the client’s organisation, or project managers, etc. Sometimes we even invite external subject matter experts to participate. When we deal with the green and ecological aspects for projects in sensitive natural areas, we bring in people who are familiar with the local biodiversity to share their knowledge. MDH: This is daily work for us, I mean we are Swiss, but we work in Singapore and Vietnam, even in Switzerland, we have local partners which are strange, but it depends on the city. It is necessary to have them in Zurich or Bern for example. So as working with consultants is something we do every day, it is not a big deal for us, and we have become flexible throughout the years by working in these three different environments. We see a lot of qualities and benefits of being in-between East and West. Historically, everything comes from the West, especially over the last few centuries. But now, we can see that there is a reversing of paths, amongst other things with the design of mass housing. Swiss clients ask us to address some issues specifically because we have experience in Asia. It has become interesting to see that all these different consultants, these different regions and different clients also, allow you to enlarge your vision of what is possible, and you start to be influenced by all sides. We see a lot of positives of being in-between, and not only doing Swiss projects, which of course have particular conditions, with particular clients, compared

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to Vietnam which can be regarded as the anti-Switzerland in most of the topics and parameters. With the consultants, it is also something that we have learned a lot from: a large amount of people involved needs a lot of coordination, so it is essential to be present. That is why we have an office in Ho Chi Minh City, with local board partners, but also in Hanoi and Singapore. Currently, we are not working in Korea, or in India, as these are also particular contexts, and you have to be there with at least one local partner with who you have an extraordinary relationship with. In Singapore we have a few, we work with them for particular projects where they have their expertise, and we bring ours, and then we combine them to create the best team for the project. TSY: One sharp contrast between Singapore and overseas markets is the presence of comprehensive policies facilitating and supporting building projects—this is something we try to promote when going overseas. Policies are significant as, in their absence, developers would be concerned about the capital investment, the maintenance of the project, and when they are prepared to invest. This shows to me that Singapore has been quite successful in building a policy system allowing this amount of urban greenery to happen and to thrive. I think that the policy system is essential. It is not only about the design. FP: Greening of a building may add value to the developers return on investment if done well and maintenance is managed judiciously. Developers are quite astute and do understand the importance of planting on a building. That said, they are also mindful of the capital and running costs of such interventions. If the concept of greening is marketed as adding value to a property, that idea could be included in the sales brochure. As an example, PARKROYAL as a hotel is successfully running at 85–90% occupancy. The emphasis is about getting more gardens in the sky that people can inhabit, utilise and enjoy. A significant challenge is to have clients understand that these greening interventions should be introduced into the project much earlier in the design stages so that essential landscape elements can be easily integrated into the building’s design. SM: You have worked in this field, so you know that it is commercially driven. We bring design sensibilities, the ideas and design principles and design proposals, but fundamentally we are frequently working for someone who has a commercial agenda, sometimes it is their only consideration while challenging, it is just a fact of life. And government authorities also have an agenda that does not necessarily include a good design or even integrated thinking. So, these are some of the kind of broad-scale professional challenges. And then, there are those challenges that we touched on before about all the technical side. MDH: Of course, what is essential is to be able to start the concept with everybody in-house, especially, the landscapers. If you only include the landscapers at the end of the process, as the last layer, it is useless. But it becomes fascinating to have everybody around the table at the initial concept stage. Of course, we would give the impulse; we would give the first idea, like this landscape identity idea of the paddy field. However sometimes, when it comes to specific regions like Vietnam, we do not find the right model, because we are architects and not landscape architects, so we

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always work with consultants who help us to finalise our vision, the species selection and so on. But sometimes it is difficult to get exactly the right species and the right people who can advise on that. HS: We still face immense difficulties, for example, in getting contractors to change their way of managing things. In the case of Bosco Verticale, for example, it is astonishing how all the trees were moved up onto the building (Fig. 10.1). You had all the cooperation ready-made because everybody had agreed to do it that way. Here in Singapore, we are far from succeeding in that way. The construction technology has not kept up with the planning advances. It is still way behind in my view. And we are facing things that we should not be facing, simply because the contractors have not moved on yet. And their ability to program and organise these very complex structures, I call them ships on land, these high-rise buildings. Because if you got a horizontal thing, it is a lot easier to build. But you are building this high thing, it is incredibly complicated. That needs a lot of work. That is something we talked about a lot, but the problem is that for everybody on the design team, you do not know who is going to build the thing because they do not come on board until after the tender process. And you are not necessarily in charge of working out who is on the tender list. So sometimes we get these marvellous contractors who pull out everything that makes it work out fine. Other times you get the nightmare contractor from hell, who has not understood anything about what you are trying to do. And that is where probably the most significant challenges lie.

Fig. 10.1 Tree lifting at Bosco Verticale, Milan. Credit to Media, https://flic.kr/p/ku4Rgx

Forgemind Archi-

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SC: I would not want to put it all on the contractor even though as consultants, we provide design solutions that work perfectly in 2D and 3D drawings. So, it should theoretically work, but when they start implementing, that is when you get all these issues on site, the lack of knowledge or coordination in putting things together. I do think that consultants have the solution, it is just about implementation when the contractor is on site trying to install all these planter boxes, the GFRC and the waterproofing and fill it up with soil and irrigation. But facility maintenance managers must also appreciate the fact that with these green typologies that we are going to get more and more in the future, there will be, I suppose, a new set of the maintenance regime. MDH: The client always comes back to this maintenance issue, which sometimes limits the exploration. That is a bit of a shame, and we feel that this is quite challenging. RH: Facility management, I think we have seen, is the biggest problem of all. The project development team are very focused on sales, very focused on completion, which, to be fair, is their job. If something elaborate meets the budget, the capital cost investment budget, they will happily do it. But if it comes attached with a substantial facility management cost, the REIT that buys it over will then dismantle that thing and waste all the investment. So, there is quite a big disconnect in the industry between facility management and property development. A greater understanding of that and more options on the table would help I think.

Chapter 11

Perceived Benefits of Greenery Within Buildings

MK: Does greenery in the building enhance the opportunities for social gathering and social interactions? HS: In theory yes, in practice, it is up to people as to whether they use space. The whole idea of creating spaces, and that goes to the LRA purpose of having usable spaces on these roofs, is to get people to use them. Today, I think the record is a little bit low, of people embracing that idea. And all the things we talked about, about heat and can you use it during the daytime or is it only night-time? Can you sit out and have coffee in that area at noon and have lunch out in the open? Funnily enough, when you go to other countries like Indonesia and Thailand, you find everybody sitting outside and having lunch in the open air. You have fans in those areas. Singaporeans are a little bit trickier that way; they prefer to be in air conditioning. But the idea is yes; these designed spaces are meant to be designed for social gathering and social interaction. Even if it does not always work now, society changes. Singaporeans are outdoors much more than they used to be. When I first came here, everybody was sitting in air conditioning. Outdoor restaurants were practically unheard of—just hawker centres. But today, people are eating outside much more. People are gathering to do things outside, so it is changing. FP: Perhaps, more urban farming or green gardens can be introduced into the building to encourage people to come together for gardening activities. If we work side by side with people who are interested in growing their flowers and vegetables, we may start a community of like-minded friends. People with dogs will gather with one another because they have something in common. Perhaps, there may be spaces for at least these two kinds of activities that will encourage social interaction, and we can have more community bonding taking place. Activities such as these can contribute not only to the physical but also the mental health of its users.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_11

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SM: Yes, absolutely! However, these spaces, let’s call them places rather than just ‘greenery’, must be accessible. Accessible means both visible to people and physically connected. If people are not able to see them, easily access them and understand the function of them, then they can just become dead spaces. Which goes back to my original point where I think those are the key things that should drive landscape, programme, purpose, functions and amenity values. MDH: Definitely—this is something we strongly developed for the Punggol Waterway Terraces, the idea of the public to private and throughout the whole palette of spaces and greenery: outdoor, indoor and in-between as well. These in-between spaces are impressive. I think there is a lot of opportunities, especially in public housing, to work on these different spaces. To come from the street to a very private space which is the unit. The corridor is already an interesting in-between since you can bring it to the street. So, you have different opportunities to have these public spaces creating gathering points where people can meet and interact. One cannot predict, and this is something disappointing because when it comes to ambience or characteristic of space, designers like to name it. But when it comes to these informal spaces, you can try to attribute a function, you can say it is a chit-chat corner, Tai Chi corner, but at the end of the day, you do not know what is going to happen there. I will always be open to possibilities and give the opportunity for something to happen here, to leave it free. But you need to provide a range of different scales, different ambiences, different characteristics, which bring other possibilities. You may even be surprised to see that people will stay at the jungle courtyard (Fig. 11.1) at the parking level, as in Punggol Waterway, because they feel it is a better place to be. You do not have to give too much of a framework for that space but open it up to interpretation. I would say it is something that in Europe, we tend to be less guiding, or less rigid than in Singapore, where it seems to be accepted to restrict activities; you need to do that here, and not here, etc. I feel it is a bit too strict like that. But it helps to create an atmosphere and the ideal conditions when it comes to shade or temperature, and I think green can improve on this a lot. RH: Yes. I think it is something that, in a way, we do not even need to justify. You can see in an urban environment that if there is a park, people go and take their lunch and sit because they like being surrounded by nature. But a lot depends on the design of the social space as well. If you design an area where it is not comfortable to sit, or it is too windy, people might not go there, even though there is a garden. But you can design it nicely so that people can gather and sit around. And I think the greenery always enhances a sense of enclosure. You can make space feel more private. I believe that it does improve spaces for social gathering, and I think every park in the world is an example of the desirability of green spaces. And in Singapore, there is a firm nation-wide cultural acceptance that landscaping is significant and needs to be everywhere. That is a huge thing.

Environmental Parameters

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Fig. 11.1 Public space adjacent to Jungle Courtyards in Punggol Waterway Terraces I, Singapore. Credit to Manuel Der Hagopian

Environmental Parameters MK: Rank the following environmental parameters: thermal comfort, solar shading, daylight glare control, urban heat island, improved air quality, noise pollution and biodiversity as perceived benefits of greenery? HS: Some of them relate to each other. I mean thermal comfort, for example, can relate to the urban heat island, so does solar shading to some extent. RH: This question does not feel quite correct to me because one solution, like greening, can perform on so many different things, and many of them simultaneously. It is tough to give a general ranking, because in some cases, like the Oasia Hotel Down-

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town, it would be thermal comfort as part of the façade, but on another building, it may not be. The ranking depends on the location and the nature of the project. SC: Intuitively, I would say yes it seems quite natural. You know with the shading you block out the sun quite a lot. Once you block the sun, the heat goes away with it. So, solar shading and thermal comfort would be as I said priority.

Thermal Comfort HS: We find that on some sky gardens, in the early morning, you get a high level of the sun coming in, which can make areas a little bit overhot. In other words, you would not want to go and have breakfast there. But at the same time, it provides a great deal of light for your vegetation, which means that the vegetation grows better. So, we get all these contradicting environmental parameters. TSY: In a modern tropical city like Singapore, thermal comfort is often achieved by air conditioning. This is the reality. Besides, thermal comfort is subjective because different individuals have different tolerance to thermal comfort, and with global warming, many buildings in Singapore would require some form of mechanical means to achieve thermal comfort. Nonetheless, in areas where natural ventilation or passive form of thermal comfort is possible, greenery does contribute through appropriate design. SM: I want landscape to deliver the best thermal comfort for people using external spaces, and I think landscape actually does that. Shade from trees and structures, use of water, non-reflective surfaces, the possibilities are huge.

Solar Shading TSY: The next crucial environmental factor that dense and green buildings provide would be solar shading. The layer of greenery outside the building envelop shields the building from direct solar radiations. Besides, many modern buildings tend to use extensive glazing to maximise view or natural light. The external layer of vertical greenery certainly helps to reduce direct heat gain and glare. RH: SkyVille@Dawson has quite a lot of roof gardens. But most of them are either on top of the car park or on the roof, so they are not shading the apartments.

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Daylight Glare Control SM: Sunlight, daylight again, that relates to solar light and heat gain. You want people to feel comfortable in an environment so having something that is bright and shiny in your face, that is undesirable.

Urban Heat Island FP: Heat island effect is mitigated if the landscape design consciously allows for generous foliage tree planting to create shading on hard paving where people walk. The landscape design is meant for people’s comfort and helps in lowering the ambient air temperature by planting more trees for shade. HS: The urban heat island is a fascinating subject on its own, because heat island, which as a hot air bubble trapped over your entire city is only one influence. But at a local level, for example, on a sky garden, it can have another influence because convection currents that take place from very high levels of heat during the day, can produce wind, which cool sky gardens. This is something we have not thought or realised before. We need to learn a lot more about the ‘Heat Island’. TSY: I would rank Urban Heat Island as the most crucial factor. This is the area where dense and green building would undoubtedly contribute. Urban heat island effect causes stress to the environment and increases the energy used to air-condition buildings. Studies have indicated that it is one of the factors that lead to climate change and global warming. If all the buildings in a city are green and dense, it will certainly mitigate the urban heat island effect. SM: Urban heat island; this issue gets trumpeted particularly by certain authorities. I have to admit I do not know the data, but I would be amazed if planting a few building roofing had any significant impact on the temperature of the city. I would have assumed that the scale of alternative surfaces or green surfaces would need to be much more extensive to have an impact on that. So, I would not have intuitively rated it very highly. Increasing the grounded green space of cities, absolutely, that is an area Singapore should be exploring and protecting more!

Air Particles FP: Can air quality be improved? Foliage on canopy trees does a fantastic job of picking up airborne dust particles which are then washed down by rainfall. In some of our projects, sprinklers are placed above treetops to allow for wash down of this fine dust on leaves.

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RH: Air quality I guess it is good for dust. Plants are very successful at turning dust into the soil. HS: Dust get all over the plants when they are undercover; they do not get rained on. And dust eventually kills the tree, because sticky dust particles accumulate on the leaves, and stop the leaf photosynthesis taking place.

Air Pollutants FP: Trees have the propensity to remove certain environmental toxins from the air. Related to the dust particles settling on leaves, particulate matter suspended in polluted air tends to settle onto leaves, and leaves stomata absorbs certain gases. However, the ability to do this is probably not something that is of any major significance. It is perhaps more important to give careful consideration to how trees with thick canopies are placed within the city to enhance spatial quality and also to help trap pockets of airborne pollutants at ground level. HS: Air quality, that is citywide, not specific to a roof garden. It is everywhere. TSY: In general, indoor plants do improve indoor air quality, but it depends on the types of plants incorporated into the building. Certain plants may introduce pollutants, leading to allergic reactions such as hay fever syndrome. Some plants may even introduce toxin. Hence, proper selection of plant species is essential. SM: Improved air quality, should be a human right. At the most basic level, plants take up CO2 and give off O2 essential for life. The scientific literature indicates that plants can also take up pollutants from the atmosphere and filter out particle matter. We believe that; plant more trees and they can help filter the air, particularly in cities. I believe that is true and hope we can do more.

Noise Pollution FP: In acoustic studies, green soft planting and foliage cannot prevent airborne sound from being an annoyance. Airborne noise generated by engines and tire wheels of moving vehicles is only blocked by the mass of a solid masonry wall. Laminated, multi-pane glass windows with air spaces between and the buildings thick concrete or brick walls can prevent airborne sound from cars and trucks infiltration. But no matter how dense the planting is, sound can penetrate through ‘soft’ leaves. RH: For noise pollution, plants are not that useful—well, my acoustic engineers keep telling me they hardly have any effect. They told us that leaves are pretty much acoustically transparent. They say it is not worth doing it. I do not entirely agree with

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them, because I used to live by a highway which had a thick edge of trees, and one day, they cut all of them down. And the difference was extraordinary; I remember thinking there was a vacuum cleaner running inside the house, but it was the traffic noise—when the day before it was nice and quiet. But our acoustic engineers would not let us use the trees for acoustic purposes in terms of their calculations. SM: I love the noise pollution one! We get this all the time: ‘Plant some trees, and the noise will be reduced’. It is not true! Nothing but mass delivers any acoustic reduction. I cannot find a study, but I told people a couple of time that when I was in university, there was one scientific study [Reethof G., 1973, Effects of Planting on Radiation of Highway Noise. Cook D. and Haverbeke D., 1974, Trees and Shrubs for Noise Abatement] to measure the effect of greenery on acoustics. The conclusion from my memory, I cannot quote the paper, was that you needed at least 30 m width of dense forest or woodland to have any measurable acoustic reduction.

Biodiversity HS: Biodiversity is a big subject and NParks is trying to do a biodiversity booklet for sky gardens. But it has boiled down most likely to just birds and butterflies—no wild animals. And desirable insects versus undesirable insects. There is an increase in biodiversity potential in roof gardens. Sentosa Universal Studios green roofs (Fig. 11.2), which we did, have recorded 41 different bird species visiting the green roof. They are on flight paths. Birds fly around, and they cross over and stop for food. They also distribute seeds, which get into the soil. I mean they poop into the soil, and new trees start growing out of our green roofs. It is amazing, all these ecosystems developing up there. RH: Biodiversity is good, but for SkyVille we were limited in terms of which species of plant. The organisations in charge of maintenance do not want anything that causes a mess or attracts ants or animals so that it can be quite challenging. TSY: This is an important area but is still a mystery among the built environment professionals. Biodiversity concerns the diverse variety of living organisms within a given ecosystem. One form of a living organism depends on many other forms, and when one of the forms is depleted, the entire ecosystem may break down and become unsustainable. Most urban greenery today is motivated by aesthetic. More often than not, they are artificially sustained and do not thrive as an ecosystem. For example, if for an aesthetic reason, only one or limited types of a plant is used, or if the heavy dosage of insecticide is used, such urban greenery does not contribute much to urban biodiversity; and I believe this is the case in many buildings currently. However, I do believe in the notion of a biophilic city. A biophilic city will most likely have an urban biodiversity masterplan that is layered over its physical masterplan. The biodiversity masterplan maps out and guides the development of urban greenery integrated with all the buildings, forming a three-dimensional, interconnected urban

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Fig. 11.2 Roof of Universal Studios, Sentosa, Singapore. Credit to ICN Design International

ecosystem including urban farming, vertical sky parks, etc., that is part of the urban fabric. FP: Biodiversity cannot guarantee that landscape intervention is better. It just means that many people have decided to jump onto this bandwagon without genuinely understanding what biodiversity means or how this may be integrated into highly urban and dense cities like Singapore. Designers must work with ecology experts who understand how to do this and to partner with them to properly design for the proper mix of native plant species that can attract insects, animals and birds for people to enjoy.

Chapter 12

Integration of Greenery with Different Building Functions

MK: Rank the ease of integration of greenery to a building function? HS: The ranking comes from the building function. And the building function relates to the economic or commercial entity that you are dealing with.

Hotels HS: So just, for example, a hotel, especially high-quality hotel, is going to have a very high level of expectation, management, costing, budgeting and manpower. Because, they have to keep up the quality of their environment 12 months a year and non-stop 7 days a week, so, greenery will be highly integrated. TSY: I would put a hotel as being the easiest to integration greenery with the building function because greenery is a selling point for hotels. RH: To hotels, greenery is an easy sell, because hotels are selling an environment. They are often about wellness, spas, relaxation and enjoyment, so justifying greenery is very easy. MDH: When it comes to hotel projects, of course, greenery in South East Asia is quite natural, even if the maintenance necessary from the operator will always be a question. But since it is a hotel, leisure, and the importance of the client, this programme works quite well with green functions.

Hospitals HS: Hospital, less so, but similar. More pragmatic, shall I say, but need to keep the green environment at a very high level because of their function. It is not just as a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_12

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place to go, as a good hospital is where people get better. We now recognise that if you have a good environment, it works better for everybody. So, they will have the motivation to keep a high level of integrated greenery. RH: I think hospitals in Singapore are also quite comfortable, Khoo Teck Puat is a good example. Wellness is something, and there are studies supporting the contribution of vegetation to wellness. TSY: Hospitals pose a bit of a challenge. Sometimes patients may need a very sanitised environment and having plants around them is not the best way to do it. Therefore, there are a lot more factors to consider when it comes to integrating greenery into healthcare buildings. However, when it is achieved, the outcome is very, very satisfactory.

Offices RH: Offices too, I think it depends on which kind if it is A grade office where people are looking to differentiate themselves, especially if it is a client who is interested in modern thinking about workplace environments, so that is also an easy sell—a way of distinguishing their product from someone else. HS: Offices, same as hospitals, but on a much smaller scale. Because they will have less landscape in any case, but they must keep up the image. They have got to have the floor polished and clean, and they need to have the greenery growing. They cannot have dead plants or empty planter boxes around an office building.

Public Housing TSY: In the past, one concern about green features within public housing projects would be: Is it easy to maintain? Will the public and residents take care of it? However, in recent years, HDB has intensified greenery in public housing estates. Since public housing in Singapore is unfenced and are always open to the public, it makes sense to seamlessly connect the precinct gardens with neighbourhood parks, again the idea of ‘borrowed’ space. RH: Public housing was not too bad, though the Town Council was concerned about maintenance. But I think we self-limited ourselves in what we did in SkyVille@Dawson, by making sure every garden was just straight off the public circulation system (Fig. 12.1). So, at SkyVille, it was more a question about the quantity of it and if we were making Town Council look after an unreasonable amount of garden for the size of the development. Not so much about any technical issues, more about how they might maintain it. So, we made sure it was all straightforward to maintain.

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Fig. 12.1 SkyVille@Dawson skygardens are easily accessible for maintenance, Singapore. Credit to Patrick Bingham-Hall

HS: Public housing you got to be pragmatic from day one in any case. You have a much more limited type of environment you are trying to produce. Nobody is going to spend that much money, not like hotels. But it has still got to be good. And it still has to be green 12 months a year. Public housing has radically changed in the last ten years. We are doing landscape schemes in public housing today that we used to do in condominiums ten years ago. So that has changed. And management and maintenance go with it. Still, it cannot be over fancy.

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Private Housing HS: Condos, they have also moved on, they became fancier; they are more like hotels nowadays. Very smart, sleek landscapes. So private housing, particularly condominiums, need very high levels, high maintenance, high expectations in the greening. You cannot sell a condominium which does not have a great garden. Impossible. I have heard clients saying when doing illustrations for their marketing; ‘No need to look at the building, just make the garden look fantastic’.

Institutional RH: In one institutional building we did, we realised no one was noticing the plants. Quite a few times the plants were looking very terrible, so we called them up and asked: ‘what happened to the plants?’ And they said, ‘oh they are doing well’. But that is the thing about vertical greenery: it is pronounced when it is badly maintained. No different from landscaping on the ground, but in some ways, it is more prominent so that it can attract more criticism. You know, if there is a building on the ground with a bit of scrappy planting, trees not doing well, we will not say anything. But when the badly maintained greenery is right in front of us, 15 metres in the air, we think: ‘what happened to this?!’ HS: Institutional which can be university: pragmatic landscapes. Must be low-cost but effective. But they still want to be green. The new generation is very green. You look at the National University of Singapore (NUS), U-town, that is the kind of expectations they would have.

Shopping Mall RH: I think most of the shopping mall developers would be enthusiastic about it, as long as it was tied in with their concept for the retail experience. We are doing one in Kuala Lumpur at the moment which has a sort of village, F&B lifestyle shopping environment, and they are very keen for the garden because they feel that it creates the kind of environment that people would come to. HS: Shopping malls, peripheral, fringe landscapes. Not a very big scale. But I have not worked yet on a shopping mall project that has a low expectation of landscape. They all have relatively high expectations. So basically, all of them are at a relatively high level these days.

Chapter 13

Post-occupancy Analysis

MK: Have you made any attempts to validate the benefits of greenery after the completion of projects, for example, any on-site verification for the dense and green buildings? FP: We have not followed this up systematically. It would be interesting to see if our integrated designs are effective and to have information to support what we are doing. But we do not have the time or the expertise to do this meaningfully. Perhaps, there ought to be more partnerships with research people to understand the real impact a green design has on the physical and emotional health of the people who live, work and play in our environments. However, good design has been demonstrated to have an impact on a city. The Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry is a wonderful example of how one building can be a catalyst for a significant transformation of a city like Bilbao. For dense and green typology, the success at PARKROYAL in Singapore speaks for itself plainly! RH: In terms of validation, we do not have a lot of data. We did some testing with Transsolar on the School of the Arts, and they found that it was two degrees Celsius cooler than what they thought it should have been. They attributed this to the greenery and the air movement. I remember BCA did some measurements at the zero-energy building, on façade temperature, where they had a series of green facades and control facades. And there was a huge temperature difference. I think it was like 60 °C in the sun for the control facades, and the planter facade was like 24° because of the transpiration and other factors. But we have not done anything similar, though it would be interesting to do it on the Oasia Hotel Downtown—to compare the temperature behind the green façade with a building nearby. So, we do not have a lot of data on that. But we are keen to find partners who can do that kind of research and work with us on it. We are excited about this Dense and Green project, and if we can get some supporting or contradicting data, of course, we are open.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_13

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SC: Unfortunately, it is not structured. It is a lot of ad hoc observations of it. They might be keen observations too. Most of the time project architects would continue with the defects or deviations, which gives us an opportunity to see how well used are the green spaces. HS: We have never done that in a calculated way. For example, office buildings that have sky gardens. We have never monitored the use of the sky garden. But I do not know whether anybody has. SM: Nothing formal, which is a real opportunity to explore in the future. Informally yes, to go back and review things, see how it is doing; how plants have established or are performing, and who, how many and what people use the space for. But to have some more review and measurement of post-occupancy performance and activity, that kind of evaluation, I think that would yield a gold mine of quantitative and qualitative information. MDH: We have never hired this kind of company to survey after completion. I know it is quite impressive. I know a few offices that are doing this, trying to test that, to see how far their vision has become true. But this is a bit obscure to me. Of course, every time when we visit the Waterway Terraces, I can see that the landscape that I had envisioned works; it is growing. So at least technically, it works. Now was it the real social benefit that we had in mind? This is much more difficult to say. TSY: Currently, we are doing a biophilic study with Professor Low from NUS. We are using a few of our projects for the study. The research team conducted a series of workshop with volunteers and stakeholders. During the workshop, they broke down the different types of what they considered as biophilic devices, then let the participants rank how important the devices were for them and how they perceive these devices. Based on the information gathered, the research team constructed a metrics system. Now we are going to start our second stage of research, which is to test out the buildings against the metrics. When you do this, it is imperative to evaluate the purpose of the building. For example, what is relevant for Khoo Teck Puat Hospital is how biophilic devices have contributed to the objective of the hospital—which is to facilitate patient recuperation. For now, surveys prove to be an effective way to quantify the outcomes of biophilic design. We are also in touch with a few researchers from the economics faculty. I think Professor Lee Siew Eang was doing some studies on a few projects.

Chapter 14

Observed Benefits Versus Perceived Benefits

MK: Have you ever tested the perceived benefits of dense and green buildings? How can the environmental, architectural, economic, social and aesthetical benefits of dense and green building typologies be captured after completion of the building? RH: In our projects like SkyVille@Dawson, we do see people playing in the sky gardens. Sometimes kids and babies are tearing up our plants, which in one way we do not like but in another way, it is fantastic that someone in high-rise has that close a relationship with plants. And I think as kids, and if you have that experience of touching nature and plants, it stays with you for life. You have that relationship with nature rather than seeing it as a small green patch 200 m below you. TSY: Based on observation, we do know that biophilic buildings attract and bring people together. For example, in Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, its central garden serves as a gathering place for the community. Volunteers such as school bands go there to perform for patients and the hospital staff; environmental groups and social care groups use it as a venue to conduct outreach sessions, etc. Besides, it also invites patients, visitors and healthcare workers to get out and take a stroll in the garden, for a break from their routines. In another example; Solaris, a project we collaborated with TR Hamzah and Yeang, in which a continuous green terrace wound up the 15-storey building a few rounds (Fig. 14.1). The 1.5 km-long ‘ecological armature’ connects the adjacent one-north Park at ground level with the basement as well as the roof gardens at various levels, including the top. In concept, the continuity facilitates the movement of biological organisms between all the planted areas throughout the building, thus contributing to biodiversity and health of the ecosystems. Anecdotal feedback from building operators and users indicate that the building is indeed full of biological life, including not only birds, butterflies and squirrels, but also snakes and spiders! However, we have not conducted quantifiable validation on the benefits of highly dense and green buildings on our own, but we have supported studies by academia, e.g. a currently ongoing research study by NUS. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_14

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Fig. 14.1 Solaris, Singapore. Credit to SUTD Multi-rotor Society

RH: We have done post-occupancy interviews at SkyVille. And once when we were filming, we went to ask people, and it turned out that a lot of them were not residents of the building, even when they were playing with the baby on the 36th floor. We asked: ‘Are you enjoying living in a place like SkyVille?’ And they say ‘oh actually we are not from here, we are from the building next door’. So, in a way that was great because it validated that it was a desirable place to be in. People were choosing to go there, rather than somewhere else. And the policy with HDB is that all these areas are public space, they are not just for the residents but for the whole neighbourhood to enjoy. I think it is great that they are public space, and we even saw an old man with a sort of bicycle and a trolley collecting newspapers and taking the lift to the top of SkyVille to have a nap. He was having a sleep on a bench with his bicycle and newspapers next to him. So SkyVille is being used as a public space. I think because it has some breathtaking views, it is a nice place to watch the sunset (Fig. 14.2), and it is located alongside the linear park. So quite a few people would go for a jog down the linear park, then as the termination point of their jog take the lift up, watch the sunset, do a workout around the top of the building, come down and run home. SM: Punggol is quite an interesting example, and we were involved in both sides of the canal; plots 22 and 20. Whenever I have been there, the landscapes spaces on the southern side, which is 20, have always had more people than the northern side, every time. Open areas are more prominent, I think it is also because of the scale, and the

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Fig. 14.2 SkyVille@Dawson, rooftop Singapore. Credit to Patrick Bingham-Hall

shape of the spaces that make them more attractive. You know, the honeycomb shape and its enclosed garden. But most of that so-called notional podium, and the roof gardens cascading down the building blocks, to my knowledge, these are not used very much. I think that is a fact of, going back to human comfort, them being just too hot, and not enough shade on them. To give you some examples, SkyVille again has big spaces on top of the car park, at level 5. But the roof garden there, whenever I have been, there were people on them—enjoying the view, the breeze, having some quiet time out, chatting with friends. The internal spaces, those so-called sky terraces, less so. I mean there are some clues about what might cause these effects. About breeze, about human comfort, about having privacy, I think that there is also a big deal about having an outlook, having this idea of aesthetics and a broader horizon. That is attractive to people. Now with SkyVille, there is no basement car park, so when you come down to the ground, you are literally on the ground. And that is where the hawker centres open out onto a plaza. Naturally, that gets used a lot. HS: We are aware of places where offices have been functioning for several years, and the sky garden is still not being used. Or they are being used peripherally; smokers’ corner and occasional people just going out for a chat or a cup of coffee. But not in the sense of them becoming formal spaces. For example, you would expect an

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office building that has two sky gardens serving ten floors, that you might get a café opening up on one of them. So, people can go outdoors and get a cup of coffee or breakfast and sit out there. So far there is not a good record of that kind of thing happening. But I have never monitored it in a quantified manner. I have just done it by observations. And sometimes, when we advise people, we tell them that story. We need to look, at the time we do these things, look forward and see how to make that work. The danger is, as this happened on too many occasions, you do open a café, and then you find that it is underserviced and then it goes out of business. That has happened in a few places. But funnily enough, in places like Hong Kong, it is the other way around. You do an outdoor café on a roof deck, and you will get instant business. It is a funny thing; I do not quite know why. It is climatic, Hong Kong has a cold season, and people are more inclined to go and sit outside. But there is a commercial angle to that, that needs to be looked at too. MDH: I can say that one of the best places at Punggol Waterway Terraces is the courtyard on true ground level, which is the car park level. This is the space where I sit when I go there, to relax. When I tour people, very frequently, I finish the visit there, and we sit and talk in this jungle courtyard. The temperature is low; there is excellent shading, it is perfect. And it is well scaled, so very good to talk, to chat … this is my observation. Now the social aspect, and how to get data on that, it is much more difficult I would say. Of course, you can survey, see how many people are coming, using the space, and based on that you can maybe adjust the space or add some more shading. But again, to always try to quantify everything is not the final goal. But of course, if you find space is not used, at the end of the day you need to address that issue. SC: What we did, with Westgate, we had the 100% landscape replacement. So, we had a considerable amount of landscape on the roof deck (Fig. 14.3). There is this area on the fourth storey, apparently linked to the fourth storey mall spaces. It is very utilised. Simply because of its proximity to these shops. Also, because it has a playground, but there is another deck where there are no facilities, just the greenery, and unfortunately, it does not get utilised that much. MK: Isn’t one of the main outcomes that surfaces naturally as a certificate for an architect is the economic benefit? MDH: For me, when we launched this project, there were almost 1000 units to sell, and 13 different people were applying per apartment, so 13 000 people were looking to buy one of these flats. Of course, HDB does well, and it is part of their job to price it and to find the right timing to launch the project. It was a premium HDB, so prices were a bit higher as the flats were a little bit bigger. The prime location in front of the waterway also made the prices higher. Because it is premium, it was difficult to decompose and explain the higher price by the fact that you have more roof gardens. It is more about the overall feeling of these projects. Similar to the Pinnacle; also, a premium HDB, which gives some more possibilities, even with more special spaces. But, once again it is difficult to decompose and say that the greenery cost this, hence this is the price. Punggol Waterway Terraces is an economic success.

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Fig. 14.3 JEM and Westgate rooftop gardens, Singapore. Credit to ICN Design International

Do you know that this project is printed on the commemorative 50-dollar bill for the 50th anniversary of Singapore? That is the identity I was telling you about. Because for us, public housing is at the core of the nation’s identity. HDB is looking to be that. And this identity, they want it green, close to nature and more organic. It is challenging, knowing that it is public housing, with robust economic and functional constraints. It is not a museum; it is not a clubhouse; it is housing. So, you need to address all these aspects and deliver an identity that can be accepted by Singapore. The fact that this project will be displayed on that 50-dollar bill shows that it has been accepted as an example of the new generation of public housing type, and probably becoming part of the history of Singapore.

Chapter 15

Impact on Neighbourhood Level

MK: Based on completed projects, can you highlight the impacts of the dense and green building typologies at the neighbourhood level? RH: The Oasia Hotel Downtown, for instance, did have a significant impact on the neighbours. It was one of the aspects when we designed it. It is a very dense area where large buildings are very close and just across the street from each other. So, it had a huge benefit for the neighbours, in that the people in the adjacent high rises can look out of their office window and see greenery, even on a high floor level. It also creates these screens of landscaping between overlooking paddies. But I think the number one performance of it is from the city level. People can enjoy it from the street, walking past in the park, as it extends the greenery up to the top of the building. So even though it is not very accessible, it is not a garden you may spend time in, but it is performing well as enjoyment at a distance. TSY: If I go back to using Khoo Teck Puat Hospital as an example, it is next to a park and deliberately designed as a park extension. The public facilities like the food court and shops are placed on the first storey, surrounding the central garden of the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. They are highly visible, so people using the park nearby have easy access to the amenities within the hospital. Location wise, the Hospital and the Yishun Pond Park are also quite accessible from the other public facilities, e.g. Yishun MRT Station, SAFRA Yishun Clubhouse, Yishun Park (next to SAFRA Clubhouse), Northpoint Shopping Centre, HDB Yishun Branch Office, etc. The hospital is very much part of the Yishun green lung, as well as the public amenities network that serves the Yishun community. Dense development in close proximity can undoubtedly coexist with Intense Green. MDH: I would say that Waterway Terraces has a real impact on the local urban context of Punggol. You might notice that the Punggol Waterway’s skyline is entirely different from the rest of Punggol (Fig. 15.1). The greenery helps to make this skyline even more transparent and more consistent with the concept. The regulation of height limitation is evident; this has resulted in the surrounding flat skyline. It is just a result © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_15

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Fig. 15.1 Punggol Waterway Terraces Singapore. Credit to Patrick Bingham-Hall

of density and regulation. On the contrary, when it comes to Punggol Waterway, we have created a different kind of valley profile. The natural identity has taken the lead on the regulations. SM: I mean if we use Punggol as an example, the mass and the aspect of green landscape impacting the neighbourhood are the green spaces that are done on the ground or podium edge. The ones that are up on the roof, I think have almost no impact whatsoever. MDH: Definitely, the final goal is to have a complete environment. And that is the beauty of public housing, where you can move all the way free from the terrace to the rooftop. I like the fact that it is a full environment. You can absorb what is outside of your plot, and then it becomes continuous. Punggol Waterway has upheld this idea from the beginning with this hexagonal shape (Fig. 15.2), it is not only a geometrical exercise but mainly a contextual exercise, it creates courtyards within the street. And to take it further, they are not only courtyards inside but areas where people can create their world. No. Instead, we open it to the surrounding area and absorb the context. It becomes even more contextual with the terracing moving towards the canal. The massing addresses the context. And I think, we had the chance to do Punggol Waterway 1 and 2, which creates a valley and addresses the interstice and the in-between spaces.

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Fig. 15.2 Punggol Waterway Terraces aerial view, Singapore. Credit to SUTD Multi-rotor Society

HS: That was the idea for Punggol Waterway and the waterfront path. The fact is that the building swept down towards the canal, forming a vast arena of space (Fig. 15.2). There is a dividing line between the property and the canal. But when you walk around it, unless you know that, you would not see it. So, it was intentionally designed to connect visually. And to be a free flow so that people can walk around that whole area freely. For Interlace, well you see that private condominiums are different because they have security gates. And you cannot walk freely through them. But Interlace, visually, does integrate with its surroundings (Fig. 15.3). If you look at it from the expressway or from the neighbouring roads, and there are not many other properties that are so close to it that they would be looking straight into it. That is changing as time goes along. But it is designed to blend out at the edges so that you do not perceive the boundary strongly. We always try to do that: to minimise the sense of it being a great big fat wall, blocking you off. For SkyVille@Dawson, I think you have to take Dawson road as an overall environment. And see whether that gets parcelled up and boxed off, and how much it integrates to its surrounding. I think this needs to be looked at in the future, as more development takes place around it. MK: How does Dense and Green Building Typologies change our relation to public parks? TSY: We can understand it this way—in Singapore, there is a diverse range of green spaces. On one end are the nature reserves, such as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. While nature activities are encouraged, these delicate environments must also be protected as much as possible. Next in the hierarchy are the regional parks, such as Gardens by the Bay, Botanic Garden, MacRitchie Reservoir Park, Bishan Park, Jurong Lake Gardens, etc. Various degree of leisure and recreational facilities may be incorporated into these parks and gardens, for

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Fig. 15.3 The Interlace. Credit to SUTD Multi-rotor Society

citizens and even tourist to enjoy. Further, towards the other end are some of the local town parks, which are easily accessible and complements town centres such as Yishun Park, Toa Payoh Park, etc. Then you have those that are closely knitted with the developments, such as community gardens. Zooming in even more, within the developments are the estate landscaping, precinct gardens, roof terraces, community decks, etc. Park connector networks connect all the public green spaces. These different scales of green spaces allow people choices. For example, Bukit Timah is probably useful for tracking on weekends, but not likely as a lunchtime meeting place. Hence, having green spaces closely and conveniently integrated with dense developments greatly enhances accessibility to nature. Such community greenery is part of the interconnected nature networks, providing people with different choices to access a variety of natural environments.

Chapter 16

Impact on Urban Ecosystems

MK: Please highlight the role of dense and green building typologies in urban ecosystems and biodiversity? SM: In the simplest terms if a building has planting, that provides potentially some habitat value to at least some species. The bees would come to look for the flowers, flies or birds as well. In that sense, even if they are common species, are they contributing to a sort of urban ecology? A kind of but could you say that it is contributing to biodiversity? I do not know whether I would defend that if it is just a kind of marketing talk? Perhaps, the important thing is if the building green links or connects to some neighbouring green space, providing another step in the ‘green corridor’ idea, crossing cities and maintaining habitat value for urban flora and fauna. TSY: There are two aspects to this. First, concerning the local ecosystem. To preserve the original ecosystem, the only way is to avoid development. But that would be to deny opportunities for human development. The other school of thought is, through integrating greenery and natural environment with the high-density development, let’s provide opportunities for urban ecology to evolve, albeit it will be a very different ecology from the original, untouched ones. However, if we provide greenery without a basic understanding of how ecology thrives, we can create a dead ecology. For example, to get rid of pests, insecticides are heavily used in many estates, roof gardens and terraces, resulting in monoculture environment devoid of rich biodiversity. A healthy ecology is not only visually pleasing but must support and sustain rich biodiversity within the environment. In this area, I believe there is a lot more to be done. People need to become more aware and knowledgeable about helping an ecology to thrive, including designers, people maintaining the landscape, as well as building users. The second aspect concerns the larger regional ecology, in particular, migratory birds. With increased urbanisation, habitats for migratory birds to rest and feed are diminishing. However, that can be mitigated if urbanisation is carefully planned with different scale of green spaces—parks with water

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bodies, green roof spaces that retain rainwater, rain gardens in residential estates, etc. Studies have shown that the parks and even roof gardens do provide food and water for migratory birds on their stopover journey. So, for the case of Singapore, when the birds use our dense but green environment as a stopover in their migratory route, we help to support the regional ecology, and the migratory birds help to enrich Singapore’s local biodiversity. RH: We have suggested a scoring system in one of our books, which we feel could be adopted. We came up with ‘fantasy planning guidelines’ in a project called Singapore 2050, where we imagined that NParks had evolved into an organisation called the Ministry of Parks, Wetlands, Rainforest and the Waterways. This organisation was managing a consciously designed ecosystem that went through all of Singapore. And in our guidelines, this organisation was telling the developers as part of land sales site conditions; you must have flowering and fruiting plants, providing food throughout the year to animal species. So, we imagined in a very Singaporean way, a highly controlled and designed system. It was in a way meant to be slightly amusing, but in another way, I think it should be done because with minimal adjustments and requirements you could make Singapore into a biodiverse wonderland. We have already seen the hornbill and the otters, thanks to small changes that were made, particularly by giving the hornbill nesting sites and food sources. It would be amazing to live in a country teeming with wildlife and operating in the density and efficiency of Singapore. SC: Biodiversity, we believe a lot in it. Although it may be a small plot or a slightly bigger plot, if we have a continuous landscape that connects from one plot to another, I would imagine that it would increase the biodiversity. For a sufficiently large plot like Interlace, it might be sufficient for biodiversity, up to a certain level. The good thing with Interlace is that it is also right next to the Southern Ridges. Although there is one road that runs in between, I think the biodiversity there would be enhanced. RH: If we can link up all this dense greenery into larger patches of habitat, it could definitely support a much more diverse ecosystem than if they were isolated like islands floating in space. TSY: According to the Nature Society of Singapore, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and the vicinity attracts up to 80 butterfly species (Fig. 16.1), including some of the rare butterfly ‘gems’. This shows that dense and green development does play a part in supporting local ecology. RH: We have seen squirrels climbing up Oasia Downtown, and it means that they are finding their way up to the Oasia garden. That is nice. We had a visiting academic from the US too, who we were talking to about biodiversity, as we have 21 species of creepers on the façade of Oasia. Partly as an experiment and partly for biodiversity reasons. And she asked: ‘oh really, are you getting animals?’ and then a sunbird came and flew out of the flowers and perched on the railing next to her, and she was just in ecstasy (Fig. 16.2). The animals are doing their best with what is there, but if

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Fig. 16.1 Butterfly spotted in Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. Credit to Emmanuel Goh Shyue Chian

Fig. 16.2 Asian Glossy Starling spotted on Oasia Downtown. Credit to Emmanuel Goh Shyue Chian and Chan Jie Yi

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everyone planted flowering plants that had nectar throughout the year, for instance, you could probably support a much higher population than just if it is opportunistic and by luck, one or two plants here and there have nectar. I know the challenge is that most of the plants that produce nectar and fruits also create a bit of a mess and attract ants or bugs. So, there is a lot of interesting testing of species that needs to be done: what are the plants that offer the biggest biodiversity bank for the least amount of trouble and complaints from people?

Chapter 17

Impact on Adverse Effects of High Density

MK: How can greenery in buildings help to mitigate the adverse effects of high density? TSY: By raising the total quantum of greenery, we can achieve a healthy ratio of greenery per capita and ensure that everyone has access to a certain amount of green area. For example, if more and more buildings incorporate not just a ground greenery but vertical greenery, and inhabitants have easy access to different areas of greenery, it can create the effect that urban density is reduced and alleviated. SC: I think planning parameters in Singapore have frankly done a good job. And I am sure the greenery does play a role in the perception of density. I think if I have a void and no greenery, although I can look through it and I can see the sky beyond it, it still seems too stuck. But when you place green, it just smooths things out, you know it connects to nature. SM: I think SkyVille@Dawson has already demonstrated that and continues to do so. The scale in the bulk of planting on top of the car park blocks, and the fact that it does have a park in front, those two aspects make a big difference. I think one that is a mixed bag is The Pinnacle@Duxton. The sky bridges and the kind of connection at the top were heavily promoted and talked about when the building was first designed (Fig. 17.1). But I do not think it makes an impact in terms of urban greenery. Conversely, the ground floor does, which in your criteria might not be considered within the strict definition of your terms, though it is almost all landscape on-structure. That has a significant impact, one because the articulation of the space is in a court; it is quite bold. They have not tried to hide the front but lifted up with quite a strong architecture facade which is all concrete precast elements. I think it works. And the other reason it works, they have managed to keep some significant existing trees, and the scale of these existing trees is such that they extend up to level 4 or 5 maybe. That makes a huge difference. And taken together that has a big impact on the neighbourhood and mitigates the rest of the towers that are massive. So, to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_17

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Fig. 17.1 Sky bridges at The Pinnacle@Duxton, Singapore. Credit to Christian van Elven, https:// flic.kr/p/FwgDph

answer your question, I still think the most effective landscape is the landscape that is closest to the ground. For all sorts of social, visual and practical reasons. Probably in Singapore there are not many buildings that manage to break free of the weaknesses in ‘high-rise greenery’ and demonstrate that green building at a high level achieve much. I think even Marina Bay Sands. I do not know if anyone else has mentioned that. It has that large podium that extends across the three towers. But I do not think of that intuitively as a living landscape [in the sense of your dense and green typologies]. I think of that much more as architecture. Is it used? Absolutely. I have stayed here, and I used it myself. Does it give you a great view of the city? Absolutely. But even being within it, it does not feel like it has the density or a kind of character of living green landscape that makes a difference. Also from being there, you feel like you are on a pool terrace, but you do not feel like you are in a garden. MDH: I think they can help a lot. But these typologies should be diverse; the variations help to counterbalance the feeling of density. If you always have a repetition of the same building, the density becomes much more substantial. Of course, the green can help, the diversity of the green, the way it is implemented, the way it addresses the concept of the project will help to create a dense living environment that is different, that is unique and allows individuals to take ownership. That also makes these dense environments more liveable. That is one strategy; the second is accepting that you can have dense urban conditions if you create those conditions. I think we need to leave portions of Singapore open, without any construction at all. We need to find a

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balance. We know that in terms of energy, in terms of social interactions, that density can add value. But we also need to have more natural conditions to keep a healthy balance. In Switzerland, we are facing, in a very different way and different scale, the same problem. We need to densify as the land, the country, is small and in terms of energy we would need to be more efficient. But at the same time, we have the chance to have the Alps, and all these natural areas cannot be constructed on, or are very difficult to be built upon. So, we have this balance of a very wild and natural environment that you cannot overcome and the urban context that is comfortable and accommodating. And you always have the chance, because it is small, to go to these natural parks, so close to a very dense environment. This balance is quite impressive. The denser you go, the more you need to add nature and greenery to keep this balance, locally, but also in the bigger scale of Singapore. That is why this idea of densifying must be coupled with the purpose of providing free space, void and natural conditions in the building project itself. This is why we should be very aware of this idea of maintenance and controlling everything. I think it is part of the concept that the unexpected would be there, and that is the beauty of nature. I believe our buildings should also go towards a more organic approach; this idea of the cells is also about that. We do not replicate things, and we are not mimicking nature, we are not naïve. We know it is not nature at all, but in a way, all the different wings at different heights, with varying perceptions according to various conditions, different points of view, it creates diversity and creates a more organic feel. If you want to go very dense, you need to go very natural, very organic. That is the balance to find. The more radical you go on one side, the more radical you must go on the other. HS: It has got to be a combination of building mass and green mass. I always advocate in designing for greenery that we view it as a volume in the environment. And the way you perceive an environment when you are in it will come from how much space you perceive or how much exposure you perceive. So, as you move through an environment, it opens and closes, and you get different views as you see it. In theory, the government zoning and plot ratio are designed to control the massing of buildings and stop them from forming the Hong Kong style, a solid wall of buildings. And the amount of greenery you can get into that will assist in creating this openness and closeness. FP: Imagine building whole blocks of buildings without any green around it. These structures would remain just that—buildings on a bare hard landscaped site. Traditional site planning meant that green environment only occupied the ground plane; there was usually a distinct separation between the built form and the landscaped environment. Green environments are more and more now being integrated and blended into building at multiple levels. The intervention would make these buildings seem lighter and also friendlier for its users. Perhaps, densely populated cities of the future would be the norm because more gardens are planned in the sky and people do not

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Fig. 17.2 Plan for the Free University of Berlin, 1963. Credit to Candilis, Josic, Woods and Schiedhelm

have to come down to the ground to enjoy a small piece of ‘Nature’ while in the air? Berlin Free University and Marburg University in Germany by Candilis, Josic, Woods and Schiedhelm come to mind (Fig. 17.2). Their urban design intervention for these university campuses makes a lot of sense now when we imagine the possibilities for planting within those courtyards. As an urban design concept, this was an excellent idea because work/study spaces were designed to relate to these courtyards, bathed in natural light. These were built in the 1960s and 1970s but it is significant because, the building and the external environment were beginning to have a dialogue. Perhaps because we studied these projects while at architecture school, we began to understand the need to incorporate this into our designs years later!

Chapter 18

Improvements and Suggestions for Future Developments

MK: What more could be done to improve the built environment industry and make it more adaptable for dense and green building typologies, please highlight specifics on the frameworks, guidelines and incentive schemes from the Government in Singapore? FP: Since you asked, as a quantum leap not very much has improved because change takes time and follow a process. The URA had the mandate to influence planning in Singapore, and they had to do it in a very systematic way over many years. The planning of a city takes years to accomplish and cannot be rushed as it is about the return of investment stemming from the understanding of trends and economic climate. URA could give better incentives (and they have), but innovation is a progressive thing since it has to evolve systematically and thoughtfully. Can we get to a point where buildings are fully integrated with layers of greenery? It takes great effort and planning, new mindsets, new ways of thinking. Are we there yet? Not quite, but we are getting closer. New ideas are great, and good designers keep coming up with them. Singapore, in 50 years, have done phenomenally well. The grand experiment will hopefully continue as we observe that Singapore is the one city where innovative thinking in planning and design can be carried out cooperatively between the private/public sectors. But we would rather see this as thoughtfully process-driven, evolving over time, slowly, surely and methodically. TSY: In recent years, many government agencies in particular URA, NParks, PUB and BCA have tried to put in place policies and incentives for blue and green areas to increase. The next frontier could be in three areas: the blurring of public and shared private domains, making the greenery more productive, e.g. urban farming, and the promotion of urban ecology. RH: I think the most significant impact was when URA made sky gardens free of GFA, that is a significant regulation, and if they ever decide to remove it, it would just destroy urban greenery in Singapore. So that change was significant. I think the 45° rule could benefit from a bit more study. I guess it could be discussed that, for © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_18

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instance, solar tube technologies or mural systems that redirect light to plants that are maybe more inside, should be perhaps exempted from GFA as well. It would be great if BCA would study green walls like, at Oasia Downtown, they have the capability to do a lot of research. At the moment, they do not allow green walls for U-value in the Green Mark for shading, because they say, it may not be permanent, it may not last. I think, hopefully with an example like Oasia Hotel Downtown, Singapore, if it is proven to be reasonably robust, it could be allowed to be included in the U-value shading coefficient calculation, then it would potentially be adopted at a much higher rate than it is now. HS: The LUSH and Green Mark, these are good programmes for the built environment, and they are part of a similar agenda. It comes down to GFA in the end as it is commercial. The government wants to have an environmental gain, but it has not found a mechanism to do it in a way that allows flexibility on the GFA issue. In other words, there is an argument going on at the top end of this equation, which is stopping other aspects from happening. MDH: How can we give more bonus with GFA when it comes to greenery? All the planters are counted as GFA, so of course, when it comes to public housing where everything is counted, it is money, public money. It makes it challenging to have planters on balconies, which should be paid by the residents. Sometimes, when it comes to affordable housing, it is not considered. So, GFA incentives are something to consider. TSY: I have heard feedback from some of my clients that the current incentives simply balance out the investment they put in. By the time they inject the investment, it is equivalent to the incentives. But many of them have gone on to integrate greenery in their development, so I reckon that it has become accepted. However, in my opinion, more incentives or impetus are needed to further the development and adoption of biophilic design. For example, after the initial installation, are there adequate continuous evaluations to ensure that the design intent is maintained? Are there postoccupancy evaluations to audit the state of urban ecology? Can the sharing economy be applied to land and building usage, e.g. can NParks work with private building owners to share their high-quality vertical greenery as viewing deck as part of the public green network? What are the incentives for the private building owners to share their green community spaces? Can public housing roof spaces be organised and used for urban farming? I do believe that next breakthroughs are needed not only in terms of monetary incentives but also in a collaborative approach to remove boundaries. HS: Perhaps, it goes back to that when I said earlier about the company that told me greening was now in their company’s DNA. But this whole subject is not yet wholly and entirely in the community’s DNA. It is coming. They started Community in Bloom, which was NParks getting the public involved in gardening, a few years ago. It took off slowly, but there are now more than 30,000 members doing gardening in Singapore. It is gradually happening, but it could happen faster.

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SC: I would say, maybe, not so much in terms of implementation but terms of education. One of the reasons I bring my family to gardens and parks is the appreciation of nature. And you know with the next generation and the generations to follow, you have this hope that they will embrace the environment that is around them. So, if we have a generation that can look at nature in a very different way, you do not need to have government policy implementation. I think it would come very naturally. And I think the government is doing a great job with the way the different ministries are educating the public. Because in the end, that landscape requires maintenance. That represents a cost, and some people down the line might complain why these huge gardens that are seemingly not doing anything to some, causing a lot of money to have them maintained. So, if you ask the question about improving incentives, does it help? Yes, it helps. But there needs to be this sustainable approach where we do not want to do 200% LRA and realise it is too unmanageable to maintain it. MDH: One of the questions for the future of Singapore is how you can get this specificity, this identity, on the public side and also on the private? You can see that some condominiums are very fancy, but they represent a small percentage. How can we come to a more specific approach, a stronger design approach, and how can the regulations leave space for that? It is a challenging question. Knowing that Singapore has quite a lot of success, you cannot say that the current system does not work; it works. But when it comes to this greenery and new ways of taking advantage of this natural aspect and implementing green in a building project, I think they need to be a bit more open, be more flexible. Because for sure, there is a lot more to explore when it comes to dense and green building typology. RH: I would also like this urban ecosystem naturally to become something that was managed more actively and aggressively. It would be interesting if NParks would have an integrated greenery masterplan with actual requirements that your vertical greenery must connect to the canopy of the street trees, for instance, to provide routes for squirrels to reach more part of the gardens. If we are talking about connected systems—there is an excellent device by the LTA who install covered walkways that loop around and link up all the buildings and public transport. It could be a great device to create green corridors that could cross roads and footpaths and link buildings together as well. But I think it is something reasonably much off LTA’s radar, but I would like to see more studies on that and how to use low-maintenance roofs in Singapore’s year-round, high-rainfall climate. I think more understanding and studies from NParks, perhaps on different types of gardens. It would be quite lovely if you could say, this is super low maintenance, scruffy garden, this is medium maintenance, this is high maintenance. So, people can have more discussions about which one is performing these ecosystem services very well, which one is doing less. So, we can understand all the functions that gardens can perform. SM: And likewise, with architecture, city planning, urban design and green buildings, what can landscape architects do that really contribute other than specifying certain species or arguing about soil depth? Lots! I would suggest we go back to where I started off, by saying you need to understand ‘landscape’ as a series of connected

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spaces and the purpose that they have. Everyone knows what the purpose of a street is. People can walk up and down, and people can drive to where they need to go. A road is also a thoroughfare or conduct for all the services that keep a city going. It is a meeting place where private meets public, but could it also be a green corridor for fauna? A shaded avenue to cool the city surface? A shared environment where building and commercial functions meet public space? All of these kinds of ideas and functions should feed into landscape and landscape design. Similarly, with green buildings, we need to look where and what landscape on a building can deliver more value. Where landscape is accessible, and let us widen the term, accessible and functional and purposeful, where landscape includes amenities. If we could make those arguments and then stitch those into planning frameworks instead of just: ‘oh you need to replace like-for-like 100% of the site with green’. Then, I think things potentially could really improve. And create some independence from all these developments being purely commercial, and just about extracting or maximising the value derived from any one plot or anyone building. Landscape as I was saying, as I understand and advocate it, is more about social good and environmental benefits and yes, beauty. Attaching value to those things, they have value. But defining that in our commercial realm and convincing people of the benefits to be shared is much harder to do. That is the challenge.

Chapter 19

Conclusion

The contributors demonstrate a wealth of experience and a deep understanding of dense and green buildings, therefore provide their learned advice on ways to tackle many challenges that designers encounter along the design process. Recognising that there are slight differences in approach from the onset of the project, they demonstrate a range of design strategies and methods that can be deployed and enable designers to create their roadmap for delivering dense and green buildings. In particular, their experience is invaluable when it comes to balancing architecture priorities and ecological improvements. This book makes a significant contribution to the understanding of a designer’s role in Dense and Green Building Typologies. Although the questionnaire and the transcripts are elaborate, only selected, answers are kept for this book. The discussion considers complete answers for almost all the questions raised during the interview. The amount of skyrise greenery in Singapore has grown from 61 ha in 2013 to 72 ha in 2015, which far exceeded the target of 50 ha the Government had hoped to achieve by 2030. The new goal is now 200 ha of greenery in buildings by the year 2030.1 A qualitative and research-based approach that considers functionality, ecological performance and post-occupancy aspects such as maintenance shall be put to practice as opposed to common methods of quantification of greenery and landscape areas for awarding such typologies. Each government agency has its targets when it comes to greenery and its adaptation in the built environment with different greening programmes. There is an emerging need for an inter-agency collaboration to harmonise the commonalities and review different frameworks/guidelines against the set goals. Most architects and landscape architects were of the view that the existing regulations and schemes need to be flexible for a case by case adaptation, perhaps based on building functionality. The interviewer identifies the need for conducting an industry-wide survey and developing key categories for flexibility in existing frameworks and guidelines to provide the designers with more innovative freedom.

1 Yuen

and Nyuk Hien.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Schröpfer and S. Menz, Dense and Green Building Typologies, SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3035-3_19

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It is imperative that the industry pioneers strongly perceive that for the clients to pursue dense and green building typologies, economic incentives play a significant role. Existing financial incentives balance the investment but there is a need for intensification. For instance, an incentive for maintenance of existing skyrise greenery and awards/recognition to the same will help and promote the greening agenda beyond the design stage. With a high-rise built environment, maintenance came out as the biggest challenge and policies need a review to include life cycle stages holistically. With visionary goals for ‘vertical kampung’, the industry also needs to work in an interdisciplinary collaboration towards greening Singapore.