On Oct 12, Cyclone Hudhud wrecked thousands of homes in Visakhapatnam in India. On the same day, Japan braced itself for Typhoon Vongfong and advised hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate. In 2012, when Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the US, it cut the power to more than 8 million homes in New York. In 2011, roads in Thailand became rivers. Shelves were emptied in supermarkets. Production lines stopped. The country was paralysed. Three years later, we are still recovering, always shoring up in case of another destructive flood.
The World Architecture Festival.
In 2014, it is impossible to talk about building infrastructures without talking about sustainability and resilience. Earlier this month, architects and practitioners from all over the globe gathered at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Singapore to trade ideas and discuss new technology and trends.
"Sustainability is trying to do more with less and less. Resilience, especially in terms of a city, is about building the character and spirit of the infrastructure of a city so that it could survive the ups and downs of the world," says Jeremy Rowe, managing director of AkzoNobel Decorative Paints for Southeast and South Asia. Resilience of infrastructure is a mode of weathering through not just natural disaster, but any form of hardship, including economic crises.
Across the world and in Asia where megacities are developing rapidly, from China through Southeast Asia to India, designers, architects and major companies in construction are investigating and inventing ways to design structures that are prepared for difficult times. The United Nations has forecast that by 2050, 85.9% of the developed world and 64.1% of the developing world will be living in cities.
While climate change poses an acute threat to cities, the ways in which cities have been developing have also undoubtedly been contributing to the problem. The panels at WAF addressed how cities could be built to ensure that public interest is well-served, how building codes and guidelines and financial incentives could produce better practices and how colours could bring life to cities.
"The Singapore Green Building Code is well-developed. One deals with regulations, while the other is the incentives. If you are able to meet certain criteria for a green building, you get certain benefits," says Rowe. "On the other hand, Thailand is a place you would go to for creative design."
Jeremy Rowe.
As an example of building resilience into a city, Rowe cites a recent study by the Urban Green Council and environmental design consulting and engineering firm Atelier Ten about the interior temperature in various types of buildings in New York City during extended blackouts.
"In hot countries in Southeast Asia, many buildings would become unlivable after about six days. They would get too hot. We need to design a building that, in a hot climate, stays cool, and in cool climate, stays warm," Rowe observes.
"For us [AkzoNobel], we've developed heat reflective coating for roofs. We have fire retardant for structural steel, something that slows the progress of fire, you can't stop it but you can slow it so it spreads less quickly through the building so that people have time to escape. And the structures can be made so that the building is less likely to collapse, or could actually survive and be used again," Rowe adds.
As trends in development change, people turn to look at the life-cycle cost of a building, rather than just the cost of products. The carbon footprint, the speed of construction, or even paint coatings that appear clean for longer, thus requiring less cleaning, are all factors for consideration.
As Asian cities grow, conservation has also become a large concern for urban planners in seeking the right compromise between development and preservation. Histories of cities are stored in buildings.
For Rowe and his company, colours distinctly define cities — they influence mood and behaviour. Colourful cities are "Human Cities". For the past 12 years, AkzoNobel has been studying the global trends of colour development and defining the colour of the year. In 2015, the colour is a warm copper orange, reflecting a more hopeful outlook towards the future.
"Cities are not buildings. Cities are made of people," Rowe continues. "I think we've arrived at the point where [conservation and national identity] are something cities are very interested in, but executing it is still difficult. You tend to find it in smaller towns like Malacca, but it's hard in larger cities because, by definition, cities are a mixture of cultures and styles." The character of a city is based on how the diverse elements fit together.
"It is imperative that urban planners understand the need to coordinate the architecture. The colours create a bigger effect than that of just an individual building. You need some fundamental zoning. Undisciplined development won't ever give you good results."
