Sustainable Architecture Trends

Global climate change, rapid population growth, and other developments have given rise to the sustainable development trend in cities and the concept of sustainable architecture and green architecture being applied to many countries in the world. The ARCASIA FORUM 16, scheduled to take place in Da Nang City from August 18 to 20, 2011, is designed to raise the awareness of architects’ roles in economic, social and cultural lives in Asian nations. On this occasion, the Vietnam Business Forum interviewed Mr Nguyen Quang Vinh, Director of the Office for Business Sustainable Development and General Secretary of the Vietnam Business Council for Sustainable Development (VBCSD). Do Ngoc reports.

 

Global climate change, global warming, rising sea level, storms and floods are existing risks that threaten human habitats on the earth. Meanwhile, the development of architecture that bases on the exploitation of nature and environment has significantly affected sustainable development.

 

This reality has induced new architecture tends which aim to bring people back to nature and regain a balance between natural environment and human beings. There are different architecture schools, namely energy efficient architecture, environmental architecture, green architecture, ecological architecture, climate architecture, and sustainable architecture. Particularly, the sustainable architecture includes all architectural contents and trends mentioned above and the climate architecture is the core and inclusion of all above contents because it ensures the project’s harmony with the nature, reduces the consumption of fossil energies, protects living environment and ecology, and economise natural resources. This thus ensures the sustainable development.

 

For long, living space has formed a close interconnectivity of architecture, human and nature. These three factors that blend together not only create an aesthetically purified space but also generates an ecological balance.

 

Vietnam has a lot of green projects such as Ecopark, Time City and Royal City. Choosing this development trend is the right direction and solution for a country badly affected by climate change like Vietnam now. Although projects will have to apply building standards and green building indicators correctly as well as designs that suit the hot humid temperature and living practices in Vietnam.

 

The world has a lot of systems with different criteria to assess sustainable architectural designs, depending on the degree of contributions to preservation and enhancement of natural ecological environment inside and outside the building; the rational, effective and economical use of natural resources throughout all stages from exploiting and manufacturing building materials, building the project and operating it to dismantling it when it expires. Particularly, it must pay attention to using clean and recyclable energy and limiting the use of fossil energy. Values of cultural identity, social and community connectivity are preserved and enhanced. As regards sustainable architecture criteria in Vietnam, the most important aspect is the overall architecture of each region must have its own identity suiting economic and natural conditions, social characteristics, cultural and historical traditions. The formation of the overall architecture must be based on approved urban plans. Particularly, it must attaches importance to urban designing contents in order to interlink architectural buildings and natural landscape to create a distinctive urban image that bears uniform diversity. The renovation and construction in urban areas must strictly comply with planning and designing management regulations to create a space- and time-matched architectural order.

 

Architecture is one of special functional fields because human beings create the second natural environment in an overall natural environment, that is, the natural ecological environment. The application of sustainable architecture design and construction in Vietnam presently draws the initial interest of the public but it confronts a lot of problems in understanding and applying it to construction designing. Such phrases as energy conservation, ecology or sustainability are branded to many projects for the purpose of catching the public interest while they are speeding up the progress of global climate change.

 

As for sustainable architecture, preserving and protecting the natural ecosystem is an important requirement. To achieve this, it is necessary to keep and lift the quality of basic elements such as land, water, air and biodiversity. Therefore, covering the surface of the natural ground with concretes needs to be minimised. But, in Vietnam now, most constructional buildings from private homes, apartment blocks, schools, hospitals to public offices, and from low-rising buildings to high-rise buildings are mostly covered with concrete. This will cause regional temperature to rise up and it will in turn affect physiology and psychology of users. Humans have to use other energies to cool the air like electricity to run fans, air conditioners or water pumps to freshen the atmosphere. On the other hand, if yards are planted with plants, the environment will be refreshed by the photosynthesis of green plants which prevent dust, blocks out noise, increases humidity, lowers air temperature, creates shade, and form air flow lines. As a result, we have a good habitat. Green trees will also provide a living environment for other beings to exist and develop, such as birds, squirrels and crickets. And, that will in return make human lives more balanced, friendlier and more humane.

 

Authorities need to have broad knowledge, far-sighted vision, bravery and responsibility to outweigh public interests over minor personal interests.

All development is for human, let alone urban development. Each modern and spectacular city is the exchange of the dwindling and withering of the great Mother Nature. Thus, one of the most important principles in sustainable development is: "Sustainable development needs to meet the demand of present generations without jeopardising our ability to meet the needs of future generations.”

 

A city that pursues sustainable development must be supported by its residents and jointly contributed in different fields and degrees. To make the “joint participation” successful, there must be a clear mechanism and conditions to ensure that that mechanism operates legally. City-greening, flood prevention, traffic congestion prevention, and crime prevention programmes are only effective when the people consider them their jobs, not politicians.