clc lecture a tale of two cities · 8/15/2017 · rivers. and in fact, this is called the three...

CLC LECTURE

A Tale of Two Cities Towards a Common Destiny of Sustainability and Resilience Through People Centric Green Architecture 15 August 2017

The lecture will feature two demonstrative building projects – the National Library Building, Singapore,

and the Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. The theory and application of the well-established

and proven concept of Total Building Performance and Diagnostics, developed at Carnegie Mellon

University, will be elaborated through these detailed case studies.

Lecture Segment

Lam Khee Poh 00:00:16

I’m going to share about the two case studies through what I call “A Tale

of Two Cities” today. First of all, let me kind of give you an introduction

to the novel itself. Yeah? Charles Dickens. Before this preparation, the

only thing I knew about Charles Dickens was Oliver Twist. I think all of

you know that right? Made popular by the musical, and the movie [with]

the little kid that said, “Can I have more?” And that was as much as I

know about Charles Dickens and when I started preparing this, I got kind

of excited again and dug into this particular novel, which was written in

the mid-19th Century.

00:01:10

And here’s the opening statement which I think some of you may, even

though you may not have read this, it may be a familiar phrase to you.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of

wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief, it was

the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light, it was the season of

darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had

everything before us, we had nothing before us. We were all going direct

to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” You know this is one

of those profound statements that remain timelessly true. Do you

agree? Regardless of where humanity is. Because it represents this

perpetual struggle humanity faces: between good, evil, black, white, et

cetera, et cetera.

So, it’s really interesting that, you know, the whole novel starts with this

idea; to put us in this constant sort of tension state; to help us always

walk that path with this awareness that there are these forces at play.

Because unless we are able to realise this, we might [sic may] be

blinkered to think that, you know, the world is great and we just get on

with business as usual. So, I thought it was very apt to start off with this

sort of a statement to put us in the right frame of mind when we talk

about buildings.

The two cities that I’m going to talk about is [sic are] Singapore and

Pittsburgh, okay? The two case studies I will be sharing about are from

those two cities. So, let’s start with Pittsburgh, which I have spent the

last 14 years [in] before returning to Singapore last year. And this would

have been the photograph… the conditions of the city in the ’40s, all due

to the industrialisation, the steelmaking that went on. And in the middle

of the [slide], that picture at the bottom is [sic was] taken in the

afternoon. Those were the conditions—the sacrifice of the environment

in the name of development and progress.

00:03:49

Transformation of Pittsburgh

Today, it’s like that. So, in a mere [span of] 30, 40 years Pittsburgh has

completely transformed. From the time when it was first charted as a

village in 1759—which by the way is very close to where [sic when]

Charles Dickens’ novel started: his novel started in 1775, that’s where

[sic when] the story started. And in 1907, it was the sixth largest city in

the USA, with a population of just over half a million. Today, it has

shrunk. You see the little graph at the bottom. We are down to about

300,000, and it’s ranked around the 60th in terms of scale, in size. Okay?

This is looking at downtown Pittsburgh, at the confluence of the two

rivers. And in fact, this is called the three rivers: the Monongahela on

the right, the Allegheny on the left, that join together to form the

beginning of the nightly Ohio river. You know the Ohio river starts here,

right? At that joint.

So, you can begin to see greenery, the air quality, and this was taken by

me on one of those good days that [sic when] I was landing back in the

airport. It’s really [an] amazing place. The other thing to notice [is] that

Pittsburgh is a great sports town. They are die-hard fans for the Penguins

and the Steelers, alright? And so on. So, there are lots of stadiums in

there. And this is the view looking [in] the other direction. In the

foreground, it’s Carnegie Mellon University—that’s where I spent my life

[for] the last 14 years. Again, you can see that a lot of greenery has been

re-introduced back into the city. And this is looking back into the city in

the far end there. Pittsburgh has been voted six times the most liveable

city in the US since the year 2000.

And according to a report by Grosvenor, a privately-owned property

group, Pittsburgh’s ability to adapt to rise above those challenges that

we saw in the early days makes it the fifth most resilient city in the world

[Grosvenor Resilient Cities Research Report]. And this is just by the

Grosvenor folks who does this kind of ranking. So, it’s also not… besides

00:06:20

00:07:40

the fact that it’s cleaned up its act, it’s also able to do very much so in

terms of building resilience and liveability.

Now, that’s when Mr Trump made a statement, as he proclaimed [that

US was] pulling out of the Paris agreement—some of you must have

heard it or may have heard it. He made that statement and said, “I was

elected to represent Pittsburgh not Paris”. And our mayor, mayor Bill

Peduto immediately reacted. He said, “I was outraged that the president

would use our city as a comparison. What Mr Trump said is what we

would call an alternative fact. Because 80% of Pittsburgh’s citizens did

not vote for him. And I was one of those 80%.” So, in his world it’s just

an alternative fact. Right? Only 20% voted for him. And the only

connection between Pittsburgh and Paris is the letter “P”. That’s the

level of association that the President of the United States can make.

Energy to Move Forward: Singapore

So there is a lot of energy that’s going on in the city to make it what it is

today, and continue to be moving forward. Now, Singapore has similar

[stories]. This is Singapore in the ’40s. The river, it was like that. It faces

[sic faced] a lot of those challenges like Pittsburgh. And within a short

few decades, this is what we are able to enjoy today. And I’m glad to be

able to be part of this sort of growth and development, since joining NUS

in 1984, when many of you were not born yet. And being in NUS and

contributing to the education, research and also projects—

demonstrative projects over 20 years. And the project you see, Clarke

Quay which many of you are familiar [with], was in fact one of those that

me and my colleague, Prof Wong—many of you might know Prof Wong

Nyuk Hien—worked on. And we were taking students out there doing

measurements, doing simulation[s], and creating this, what we all

regard as a tremendously successful urban renewal and urban

intervention project, Clarke Quay. So, we’re very glad to have that.

00:09:13

Commonalities: Pittsburgh & Singapore

What are some of the commonalities then, between the two cities? And

as you should see, the most liveable cities as I said, Pittsburgh has been

recognised and so is [sic has] Singapore, and you can see both [of] their

names up there in the metropolis sort of ranking. Right? So, there are a

lot of similarities in that regard—both have obtained that kind of

recognition as the world’s most liveable cities. And just three months

ago when I was back in Pittsburgh, I saw this in the airport, which

honestly surprised me. Changi got their award, of course. Why? Very

obvious. But I said Pittsburgh? 2017 got the same award? Something is

wrong here!

So, I went and dig [sic dug] up the statistics and guess what? The

transformation of the Pittsburgh airport is [sic was] amazingly

significant. They had a 70% increase in the number of non-stop flights.

In terms of the ridership, population has gone very, very high. Even

though the number of actual, you know it’s still nothing

compared…we’re talking about just a handful of a few million

passengers compared to the 58.7 million in Changi, which soon will go

to 80 and more when terminal four opens and unbelievably 140 million

when terminal five opens? The… it’s just mind boggling, those sorts of

numbers. So, the point I want to make is that size is not the only thing. It

is what we do in that particular context, using the same sort of principles,

the same sort of approach that can in fact be applied to those very

different climatic, social, cultural conditions. The goal remains the same,

how can we make life better?

So, when I went to Pittsburgh, at that time in the ‘80s when I went for

my PhD, it was very difficult to convince my boss at that time to send me

to Pittsburgh. Because it was [in] those conditions. He said “Pittsburgh?

Why do you want to go to Pittsburgh?” And it didn’t help that I got

admitted to Harvard and Berkeley, and I decided I said, “I really want to

go to Pittsburgh, to Carnegie Mellon University.” It was a tough sell. But

00:12:00

00:13:50

I’m glad that the boss saw my genuine passion of [sic for] wanting to be

at the place where things are just in that transition. I don’t want to be in

a place that kind of, more or less, is already established, I want to be in

kind of, you know new grounds. Breaking new grounds.

And at that, it was building this intelligent workplace on top of a 1900

existing building. We were just in the process of designing that building.

And so, I thought that was the greatest opportunity and I learned a lot

during the design process about modelling, energy simulation, et cetera,

et cetera, et cetera, and that building was built. With that plus many

other things, we were able to—over the ten years, and since you know

I went back as a faculty… as a professor in 2003, I’ve been working there

over the last 13, 14 years. We worked very, very hard to continue to

push the frontier of R&D [research and development] in advanced

systems and energy-efficient design. Then finally, we had a major

breakthrough when the National Science Foundation recognised us.

Now remember we are in the school of architecture—and that was a

major, major breakthrough. It took us ten years to get there, to prove

that architecture does not only mean the arts and the humanities. It can

also and must necessarily embrace science and technology. And so, our

graduate programmes are STEM certified—Science, Technology,

Engineering and Maths. So that was a major breakthrough. Took a lot of

hard work.

Fundamental Principles: Breakthroughs for Cities

What is the fundamental principle? Before I dig into the case study [sic

studies] themselves is this concept, I’ve shown this many times [and] it

remains relevant. I firmly believe that our construction industry is really

part and parcel of our genetic make-up. It has to be part of our genetic

make-up. Right? We know our genes and chromosome [are] made up of

four elements—I put the four elements up there: architecture,

engineering, construction, operation. Any missing element in this would

mean that the entity or the industry is simply dysfunctional, or disabled,

right? I have a daughter who has a shortened gene. So I know, okay? So

00:14:46

that has to be the fundamental sort of principle that we all should

subscribe to: that we are all part of the genetic make-up of the industry.

It’s in… should not be, and cannot be divided.

And then there is the process that we are all very familiar with. Right?

From design, construction, commissioning and operation. The

programme that we ran at CMU [Carnegie Mellon University] is called

Building Performance and Diagnostics. For thirty years, Building

Performance is now strongly established but the Diagnostic part is still

emerging. And the diagnostics is important because we really need to

now begin to evaluate, measure and verify that we really got what we

wanted, and not just walk away after it’s built. That I think has to be the

motivation. So, from there we have a framework that has been used and

will continue to remain relevant regardless of the technology. And that’s

important. You know, technology will continue to emerge and evolve.

But the fundamental principles, why we’re doing what we’re doing,

should not change. Okay? And [at] the top right-hand corner, are [sic is]

really what we should be all about: meeting the physiological,

psychological, sociological and economic needs.

This concept is now 35, 40 years old. We have barely touched that

corner, in terms of serious R&D—barely touched. We do a lot on the

systems, yes. We do very, very good air-conditioning system[s], very

good COP [co-efficient of performance], et cetera, et cetera. But we may

not have done as well looking at those [needs at the] top right-hand

corner. So, in the run up here in Singapore, after I came back from my

PhD, this was one of our very first example that we were… had the

privilege to do working with Dr Cheong Koon Hean, you know [her]

right? HDB [Housing and Development Board] CEO [Chief Executive

Officer], at that time she was in URA [Urban Redevelopment Authority],

one of the directors. So, this building was being conceived and we were

helping her, basically preparing the entire concept of Total Building

Performance and Diagnostics into the tender document. This was a

00:17:04

00:18:22

design build, and then we help[ed] her and her team to do the

assessment and evaluation.

And that was the first time as far as I know, that we were able to

convince everybody that the lowest tender did not meet the

requirement[s] in a very objective and scientific way—which is unheard

of, as far as I know. It’s very difficult to defend that, right? But we set it

up in such a way that we were able to demonstrate that it did not meet

the requirement[s], regardless of how cheap it is [sic was].

So that was the first lesson that we learned. And it was proudly

presented that this was in fact the first example of the reality of total

building performance. We were just there for a… DP’s [DP Architects]

50th anniversary and I mean I’m still very pleased. I walk in there and

everything is still working very well. So, very happy with that. And we

also got, by the by the ASEAN Energy Award for the first time. Not bad

for a novice—for the first time we did this, and we got that energy

award.

National Library Project, Singapore

Then the vision grew bolder, stronger and we got involved in the

National Library project. Just [to] very quickly introduce how we got

involved, or I got involved, I don’t [sic didn’t] know Ken Yeang at that

time—Dr Ken Yeang who’s the architect. We all come from the same

hometown, KL [Kuala Lumpur], but I’ve never known him, at least [have]

not worked with him. He has written many books, I think you all know,

about bioclimatic and skyscrapers. And that book came out [in] around

1998, ’97. The Singapore Institute of Architects asked me to write a book

review for the SIAJ [Singapore Institute of Architects Journal], the

journal, which I did. And I spent quite [a] significant time looking at that

book and wrote a review.

And in that review, I really praised and commended Ken for his vision;

for a tremendous sort of passion that he has; for pushing for green,

00:19:30

sustainable, ecologically driven design—absolutely way ahead of the

game, way ahead of the time. However, I also said by the way, you

should leave the building science to somebody else, because there were

things in that book that were all questionable. And Ken is very gracious.

He replied into the SIAJ and apologised, which I thought was very

gracious of him. And then he said… oh, he gave a bunch of reasons, the

constraints of practice et cetera, et cetera, but his last statement was

you know, “Professor Lam is a bit harsh on me. He kind of reviewed my

book as though it’s a PhD thesis.” And I thought to myself, “Well, he is

Doctor Ken Yeang, after all. I don’t think I was overly harsh.” But anyway.

So that’s how we kind of met.

A few months later he called me up, he said, “Khee Poh, do you want to

work with me on the Library competition?” So, I thought to myself, I

said, “Uh-oh, here he is trying to test me out and see whether I am just

an academic, armchair critic who really can’t do anything?” So, I took up

the challenge, formed a team and the rest is history, because we won

the competition. And at that time, these were some of the motivating

factors, right? The sort of declared conditions of what is happening.

There was a shift in the economic base, from industrial to information;

Government building programmes directed at educational campuses

and libraries to build the knowledge industry—very, very important, we

were just talking about it just now with Mr Khoo. And then, adding a

cultural layer to the urban mix, which previously emphasised shopping

and eating—which is of course and continue to remain the nation’s

pastime. So that’s the sort of background.

And then the competition brief was really very telling because, you

know, I know we all write briefs, and we see all kinds of briefs—but there

is a very, very genuine effort to come up with this, because there was a

very widespread consultation with the people in society to come up with

this set of requirements. There were a lot of surveys, a lot of workshops

and soliciting feedback and so on. So, there was a real genuine attempt

by the Library Board to represent the people in this national icon. And

00:22:22

we, of course, were very excited to do this and actually we thought,

“Boy, this is a stiff competition.” And we did have very stiff competition

from brand name architects all over the world, and we were just the

local boys, “local.” It was a long shot, we thought.

However,…I mean we did the usual, you know all the rendering that

architects will typically do. Now remember this is 1998. This is almost 30

years, 30 years, right? 1998? 20. 20 years ago. 20 years ago. So,

everybody does this and there’s nothing…you know, rendering. And this

rendering has become even more amazing nowadays, right? We have

this fly-through virtual reality et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But one

thing that distinguished our team, and this was told to us by the CE

[Chief Executive], was this: at the competition level, we actually did an

entire building energy simulation. model. And we did the air-flow model.

Ken was big time on his garden in the sky concept. So, we did lots of

simulation about air-flow, I tried to ask him not to draw those magic

arrows—I call them magic arrows. But he said, “No, lah, it look[s] nice.”

“Okay, look nice.” But they don’t work like that at all, okay? But what

does work is the CFD [computational fluid dynamics] that we did. And

I’ll show you what those are in a minute, okay?

But the point is that it is a holistic approach. And particularly, the energy

aspect of it, we spent a lot of time. We did a survey of buildings at that

time in Singapore. And of course, there was no other National Library,

we did [surveys of] sort of office buildings. And this was the cumulative

performance at that time, the percentage of cases… I think we

measured, we surveyed about 100 over buildings at that time. [It was]

very difficult to get information compared to now, of course. And this

was the performance curve. So, we were immediately able to ask the

clients, “Where do you want us to set the target?” Remember there was

no Green Mark at that time, nothing of those stuff. So where do you

want it to be? And the client said 175 or 178. Those two numbers were

given and publicly announced. I told the client, I said, “I can do 159 for

you.” He thought, “Cannot be so precise.” By the way this was a 55,000

00:25:07

square metre building. Mixed-use. How can you be so precise? 159. I

said, “Yes, I guarantee you plus minus five percent.” Very boastful. He

said, “Better not tell the public this, let’s tell them 175.” I said, “Fine, I

can sleep.” No problem.

And there, while we did that and we did all kinds of, you know

parametrics, different ideas, the client had a representative who’s an

architect. He wants to have his say about how the design should be. So

we also simulated what he want[ed it] to be—not as good as you can

see. [It had ] much lower square metres because he wanted this, what

you call a plaza scheme, at that time. And then we have the street

scheme that you see today. And we were able to get around 175 you

know, just to meet the what the client wanted but this alternate scheme

really didn’t work.

What is the trick? Why am I so confident? Why are we so confident?

Given all this complexity of use, it’s the fundamental principle of zoning.

This is so basic, but somehow it is the lesson that is hard to learn—I don’t

understand. What zoning does to us is to recognise not only the physical

location, but also the functionality of the space, what it is used for, and

how it can be controlled or should be controlled—separate from the

other zones. You know a zone that is facing north, just by virtue of its

orientation will behave differently compared to something facing south,

east or west. In our case it’s east-west.

So, we did a model that had over a hundred—can’t remember now—

180, 190 zones. Remember that [at that] time there were no fancy

software. We were doing it literally, those of you… Anybody do[ing]

energy simulation? They don’t do. We literally have [sic had] to type in

the curve. “X” equals, “Y” equals, “Z” equals, next to… and so on. It’s all

text. There was no graphic [sic were no graphics] like we have today. But

the principle of getting down to the details of zoning, because the zoning

as I said differentiates its use and the way you want to operate the

00:27:41

building and the way you can then separately control, if and when

necessary.

Given the technology at the time, it was so tough to do. But we said it is

important to do. We need to push the frontier. And that really is [sic

was] the trick. Until today, I don’t care how sophisticated, how

complicated your building is—and since then I’ve done many, many

other pretty complex [buildings] including hospitals and so on—[the]

same principle works. Whether you’re an architect or an engineer, this

is the place where you meet and talk, and understand the

functionalities, if you want your building to operate and function

according to design. Hard work. You need to discuss, you need to debate

and work with the client, work with the user.

And the Library Board actually had a very, very good user base. They had

all the committees that gave very, very good feedback as to exactly how

they envisaged the place will [sic to] work, how they would use it, how

they worked and so on. So that helped a lot. Then there is the CFD. And

at that time again, you know we don’t have fancy computers, and some

things just cannot be done like we can today, or at least in a[n]

affordable way. So, we had to combine some physical modelling as well

as computational modelling. So, we understand importance of the

surroundings, right? And so often in modelling in the past, people just

do their own buildings. The site is like [a] green field. I have seen a lot of

those models. And they need to… those are all failed, failed cases. So,

we need to do the surrounding[s], but it was very, very difficult, well, at

least at that time. Now it’s much easier. Because of computing power,

affordability is much improved. So not an issue.

In those days we couldn’t, so we had to use the good old empirical,

physical way: get the wind tunnel tested, measure the pressure points

on the surface based on the surrounding and based on the profile; and

then input the information into the CFD. That’s how we augment[ed]

the computation fluid dynamics. This is what actually happens in the

00:29:54

building! Not those magic arrows that fly all over the place, okay? This

tells you. I think all you or most of you would have been to the podium,

right? Right? It works, right? Everybody I ask they say, “Yeah, it works.”

Well it didn’t happen by magic. There were [sic was] a lot of work being

done.

In fact, at one point, this podium was originally much higher. It was 17

metres high. But then, one year into the project, the drama centre was

introduced out of the blue. It was actually a 200-seater lecture theatre,

[but it] became a 640-seater drama centre with [a] fly tower, which you

see today. That came much later. And because of that, we had to keep

dropping that underside, the belly—we call it the belly. And every time

we dropped that, we simulated again and I told Ken, “Ken stop. That’s

it. Can’t drop any more. We drop any more, it will not work.”

So we were tracking that kind of design decision-making. And at one

time, Ken wanted to… you know there are two bridges, right? He wanted

to cover up the two bridges. Completely. Of course, I’m not [sic was not

an] architect at that time, I couldn’t criticise him on that one, but I did

the simulation and said no, it doesn’t work. Because the amount of air,

if you see the top, when it hits this big boxed-in bridge, [it] would create

such a velocity down on the bottom at the street level that ladies’ skirt[s]

will [sic would] probably fly up. We were able to show that to Ken and

said, “Oh by the way, it really doesn’t look too good if it’s all boxed in.”

Then he was convinced because of this. He certainly wouldn’t take my

architectural sensitivity, right? He is the architect. But we are able to

work together this way. To come up with that right solution. And when

it’s right, it does look good I have to say.

So these are the things. And we talked about thermal comfort and so on

and so forth. The CE was very hesitant, he said, “People, we need plan B

right? To air-con[dition] the whole place?” I said, “Well, you can offer

that but…” I put my neck on the chopping block, “…it will work.” Because

we did all these studies to make sure that it worked.

00:32:32

And of course comfort is, again a very localised thing and we cannot

simply take something from overseas like ASHRAE [American Society of

Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers] [Standard 55]

and say it is applicable to us. So, we also need to look at the equatorial

comfort index as the basis of evaluation. So, it’s important not just to do

the work, but to find the right benchmark to evaluate the suitability of

those data. So we did that.

And we also did things like glare. Because there’s huge glazing, right? [A]

huge curtain wall. Glare is on everybody’s mind so we did very extensive

glare. And one thing about glare, I just want to highlight that glare is a

function of where you look. It’s not a generic thing. So you, as a designer

must look. Where is the, where are your occupants looking? And is that

glare critical or not? And we did a lot of this study and… no building will

be perfect, so we discovered that for two months in a year, in the south-

east corner, in the morning between 09:30 and 11:30, there will be

glare. I told the CE, I said, “Sorry, [it] cannot be 100%.” So the question

is are you able to accept the a couple of hours in a few months, or not?

He said, “Now that you tell me, no. Not acceptable.” So we had shades

inside.

So those are the kind[s] of support that we can give—should give as a

team. And of course, Ken has all this shading that he has right? Now as

a supporting designer or building science designer, I cannot tell him, I

mean I shouldn’t tell him, but what I can give him is given different

heights and width ratio[s] of the shape, how much percentage of the

savings can you get? So we plotted a whole bunch of this kind of design

performance curves for him. Then he’s able to say, “Oh, actually

between this height and depth ratio of the shade, it didn’t make much

difference. I can play with it.” And as a result, you see those tapered

shades, it’s not just a straight shade, it’s tapered. So even if it’s tapered,

more or less, it didn’t make much impact because of this kind of

performance behaviour that we were able to generate for him. Very

important point, okay?

00:34:57

No good project ever goes smoothly. I don’t know whether you’ll

remember this, but there was [a] disaster, for all kinds of reasons. The

two partners. They were… he was teaming up with Swan McLaren at

that time and Swan McLaren is no longer in practice I think. So, anyway,

that was it. We all got fired! But the client retained us. And this time, we

were the consultants to the client, we were not consultants to the

project. And as a result of Construction 21, many of you have

remembered, I was also serving on the committee, the government

decided to launch this. And one of the many, many recommendations

was design-build, in those days. And so they looked around and said,

“Oh, the library is still under design, so design-build!” So that’s how it

happened. So we became design-built—although honestly the design

was [already] kind of done. However, the contractual obligation was

now shifted over to the tenderer. So, we remained consultant to the

client to make sure things are checked.

And there were many things that we had to continue creating a sort of

knowledge transfer to the design-build team. For example, I want to

highlight a few things regarding the importance of integrated design.

This, for example when we did curtain walls, at that time everybody

talked about OTTV [Onvelope Thermal Transfer Value] or now it’s ETTV

[Envelope Thermal Transfer Value], and that’s about all. How the

insulation value… then after that we had the lighting right, the visible

transmittance. But very little attention was given to the mullions, the

actual frames. But we all know the frames play a very important role. So

we made sure the performance of the frames are in the specs.

And the consultants will kind of say, “Well, we’ve never done this in

Singapore before. We only do it in cold countries.” I said, “Well, there’s

no difference. Just that our weather is upside-down here. We have cold

inside and hot outside.” Right? So, same principles. So I said, “You’ve got

to do this. And prove that the mullions of the Library curtain wall do not

exceed 42 degrees Celsius at peak solar radiation.” “How to do that?” I

said, “Well, there are software that can do this.” And so they did.

00:37:36

It was so interesting. They didn’t believe me. [The] first time they

simulated, they said “No, Professor Lam it will never reach so high.” I

said, “Believe me, it will. I’ve experienced mullions in Singapore that

reaches as high as 60 degrees Celsius, on a very, very hot day.” They

said, “No! Cannot happen.” I said, “It can. I’ve gone around touching

things. Many times. Okay? It can.” And when they simulated [for] the

first time, they said, “Oh my god, it’s true!” Some of those temperatures

went up to 64 degrees. 62, 64. So I said go back to the drawing board

and make sure you meet my 42 degrees.

They refused to do the thermal break, you know in temperate climate

we do a thermal break in the mullions. They said, “No, we don’t do that

in Singapore.” I said, “Why? No, we just don’t do.” That’s it. I said, “I

don’t care. This is a performance-based contract, you meet the

performance. I don’t care how you do it. You [must] prove it to me.”

Because that’s contractual. And they did, they modified the mullion

configuration and so on so forth, simulated and got to that [number]

below that 42. So pass. That’s one example.

Lighting also. [We had to] make sure that we integrated day lighting with

electric lighting. Right? How do we determine the zoning? We do the

daylight calculation, get the zones right. So that the zoning for the

dimming and controls can in fact can be integrated and map with the

daylight availability at different times. Why is this important? Because it

has a direct impact on the lighting energy component. My simulation is

based on this, as well as many, many, many other things. If these people

get it wrong, my 175 or 159 will be wrong. So, every component had to

be controlled.

They were great lighting designer[s], very, very creative but they had

never done an energy audit of their lighting design. Ever. They said, “Prof

Lam, we have never done this before.” I said, “Well, this is the first time.”

They sent two very young lighting designers, two ladies, and I had to

actually teach them. They were like students. I said, “Do it this way. Here

00:39:54

is the spreadsheet, calculate the hours, choose your lamp” and so on.

And at that time, we set it at 15 watts per square metre, which is pretty

good at that time. Now it’s like nothing. Now it’s twelve, right? One point

two per square foot? And some have even reached point eight now, with

the LED’s [light-emitting diodes] and so on. So in those days 15 was very

good.

And these girls came back and [the] first simulation they did, first design

they did was 29. I said no-go. [After] a couple of iterations, they met the

number and that went back into the design. And here’s a picture of the

Drama Centre, which was a great… challenge. But at the same time, it

was an opportunity because for the first time I was able to introduce

floor-based ventilation—displacement ventilation, which is absolutely

quiet and very, very comfortable. So, we were able to do that here, that

was a nice opportunity.

Now architects of course will continue to work with the client to look at

what the colour looks like, how you know the shape and the styling…

That’s all very good. All the mock-ups that we do, but these are not

performance based mocked-up, yeah? This are just architectural

mocked-up. And Chris[topher] Chia is very particular about this, the CE.

He said, “I want the Honda Odyssey white.” (Chuckles) Honda Odyssey

white. Okay, that was his white. No other white, that’s the white. And

[there was] lots of discussion and so on and so forth, which was great.

But we also at the same time had to make sure that the performance…

the total building performance worked. Acoustics, right? We all know

the glass is good, maybe even the frame is good, but the joints are

always the problem. So we had to put it to the lab [and] test it.

It didn’t meet the requirement first time, so they had to adapt, and

[after] several rounds of testing, finally they got the solution and it

worked and everybody was happy. You see, it takes a big team of people

collaboratively, to do this. Committed to quality. It’s not just the

architect, it’s not just the engineer, it’s not just the contractor—it takes

00:42:06

a whole big group of people all wanting to do the best thing for the

project. Okay?

And you know we said, “Well the shades are for the shades” but because

they are so big and we know Singapore rains like crazy, acoustics there

become an issue. We anticipated that because of the concept of total

building performance, so we had to put sound attenuation material

inside the shade. Now, generally you would not have thought about that

right? A shade is a shade. Why do we need sound? Well because the

rain’s going to make a heck lot of noise and the HDB on one side, Middle

road and the hotel on the other side was going to complain like hell. So,

we put in acoustic absorbent materials and did testing.

So, doing jobs like that [was] not easy. I had to go there with my team,

midnight to do the testing in one of the Jurong warehouses, when

everybody was sleeping—so that it’s quiet and we can test this. We did

that acoustic test in order to make sure it works. So, there are a whole

host of green technologies that have been put into place—all adding to

the final target of that energy target I talked about, as well as the other

total building performance mandates. Okay?

And even right at the end, you know the struggle to get the last piece

in—escalators, it was a struggle. Because the contractor was constantly

wanting to make changes, and the motivation was quite simple: to get

more profit. And the project, sorry to say to the contractor, he hasn’t

got much chance to vary things because it’s so tightly sort-of monitored

based on performance requirement. So you cannot willy-nilly say, “Let’s

change this, lets change that.” And spend all your variation cost. So he’s

desperate, this was the last thing. He complained to the CEO, to Chris

Chia saying Professor Lam is obstructing the project...and many

complaints. So Chris called me up, [he] said, “Khee Poh, what's

happening? The contractor’s complaining about you blocking everything

and slowing down…and there was this escalator…” He didn’t want to put

in the variable speed drive. Would you believe? He wants to say constant

00:44:36

drive. He didn’t want to put the sensor. That would screw up my energy

completely, if that was not done.

So I told Chris, I said Chris, “Look, I don’t want to argue anymore.” This

was towards the end of my time anyway. “We’ve done a million things.

And honestly, nobody knows, nobody cares.” I’m talking about the

public. “The one thing they will witness obviously, are your escalators.

On opening day, I bet you the press will ask you the first question, are

these escalators green? You better answer that.” He said, “Point taken.”

So he told the contractor, “Do as Prof Lam said.”

And guess what? On opening day that was the first question. So, they

were like, “Wow!” Anyway, so there are a lot of these images that you’re

all familiar with this. So remember? That was our target. This was the

operational energy measure when the building was first TOP-ed

[temporary occupation permit]. The big peak, 209 was when they were

moving things into the library—the lift was being used constantly. And

then it went down to 150. And then I took a group of people from US,

well, all over the world to come and visit the building in 2012. It was

operating at 157. I went to the BCA [Building and Construction

Authority] and got these statistics—thanks to BCA—over the last few

years. There? [It is] still operating, in fact below my 159. Okay?

And we won all kinds of awards and so on and so forth—pretty happy

with this. And by the way, Chris is now a Professor at our Business School

in NUS and we just hired the QS [quantity surveyor] of this job, Winston

Hauw [Sze Shiung]. He retired and we just hired him as our Professor of

Practice in the Department of Building. So, the team is back again. So

any new projects? Any new challenge? We are ready.

So, there are memories you know, of course people always have this

heart about the old, so we were able to bring some of the bricks. There

was some controversy, I think if you remember, people said, “Please

don’t tear down this thing and this, you know the heartbeat of the

00:47:05

00:48:27

nation and so on.” People donated the bricks, et cetera— [we]

understand all that but on the other hand, we still need to make some

sacrifice and progress. So we moved the bricks to the basement. So

these are the original bricks on the top right hand corner. And PM Lee

was, for the first time in the history of Singapore, where the National

Day message was delivered outside of the Istana—now it’s very

common, he just did it in Marina [Bay]—so that was the first time it got

out of the Istana, where he gave the talk.

And so, we got a thumbs-up. And we had a dream team. These are all

my colleagues in the school. We have architects, engineers, Mr Tay Kian

Jin[?], he’s the Fire Chief—he wrote the fire code for Singapore at that

time, and structural engineer, Jim Harrison[?] was the disabled… he

designed for the disabled. So it was [an] amazing team that we had to

do this, okay? Now it’s five o’clock. It’s one hour, we’re supposed to

finish at 5:30 [p.m.] but I will quickly go through the second project,

which is much shorter because it’s much smaller. This is 55,000 square

metres, the other one is only 2,000 square metres.

Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, USA

But the important thing is, and this is the Phipps Conservatory in

Pittsburgh which is about [a] five minutes walk from Carnegie Mellon

University. It was opened to the public in 1893, and it was a gift from the

magnate, Henry Phipps [Jr], to the city at that time. And over the times,

you know Phipps was passed over to the city government to run, and

then now, the city government has sort of established the Phipps

Conservatory as a kind of non-profit organisation to run and administer

the centre. So the development, the original [development] as I said

started in 1893 and has undergone a number of upgrades and additions.

For example in 2003, the expansion project began, the welcome

centre…yeah, this is the welcome centre—this was built as the first

phase of the expansion and then [it was] completed in 2005. This is the

original.

00:49:32

And then this whole upgrade of their preparation facilities as well as this

multi-purpose conservatory, what they call the Tropical Forest

Conservatory was completed in 2006. And then came this—The Centre

for Sustainable Landscape, which is the phase three that I will talk about

very briefly moving forward. And that was just opened very, very

recently—reasonably recently, in 2012. And that was the subject of a

research and development that I was able to do with my PhD [Doctor of

Philosophy] students over the last five years. We got a grant from the

National Science Foundation—a two million-dollar grant to work on this

project together with the client.

And this building has won practically every award in the United States

that has to do with green and sustainability. It is a net zero energy

building, it is a living building challenge—I don’t know if you know about

living building challenge. I won’t have time to elaborate. Basically, that

encompasses a lot more than just green buildings, right? And then it has

sites which has to do with the way sites are conserved and used, then it

was the Engineering News Record Best Project in 2013, at the Alliance

to Save Energy, which is a kind of… more like a government event that

they won the Innovative Star [of Energy Efficiency] Award; and then the

WELL [Building Standard], which is the latest, about wellness in buildings

and that was what we also won.

So we did the usual, all the principles that I talked about equally applied

to this project. We did all the zoning, but now we have a much more

sophisticated software—much more sophisticated, and much faster

that now instead of doing ten runs, twenty runs, I typically now ask my

student to do a thousand runs—just to get down to the accuracy, okay?

And they are PhD [students].

So different kinds of scenarios design. We’re able to get down to the

fifty because of net zero. The amount of solar PV [photovoltaics] that we

can have is only about 59. So, we got to go below that to get our net

zero, so we pulled out all the stops in terms of integrated technology to

00:52:00

get to that point. But the important thing now that we added to this

process is the ability to calibrate the model—to make sure that the

model is in fact, real and correct after the building starts operation.

Okay? Everything in front is exactly the same procedure-wise, as the

library.

Remember my life cycle chart? The part about learning is something

really new, not many buildings do that. Right, especially [in] speculative

development, you [have] got no chance to do that unless it is owner-

occupied. [Since] this was owner occupied, we were able to do that. So

we were able to collect data over the first year, second year and

calibrate the model. It’s a little bit overwhelming but this is all kind of

technical stuff. We basically calibrate[d] the model based on the

weather, real weather that is happening with the weather station

feeding that. We calibrated the occupancy—very important because

whatever you think is the occupancy is never correct. Never! No building

you can ever predict. Because it’s dynamic, it’s changing. So, you’ve got

to monitor this in real time as well.

And then comes the lighting and equipment. Now you may think you’ve

already applied it, but how people use it and control it is something that

you may not know, or may not be available. Control. So that’s the other

thing and finally, your air-conditioning, yeah? So we calibrated all this

based on measured information, in a very complex, sophisticated

system. The thing that we discovered and this is something that we all

must pay attention [to is] that even as our buildings become much more

energy efficient in terms of the HVAC [heating, ventilation, and air

conditioning], air-conditioning, so on, the plug loads are going up sky

high. We have got to pay very close attention. We are charging our

iPhones, our iPads, our Fitbits and god knows what else. Instead of one

monitor we have three now, typically, right? And then we have all kinds

of hard drives and so on and so forth. That is causing the issue now. How

are we going to predict this? This is very hard. It’s very difficult to predict

this. But we got to do more research.

00:54:16

So we did research on occupancy, and this was one of the many things

we did as a research project and we engaged the users and we used

Fitbit, we used all kinds of metering, monitoring. And guess what? The

actually occupancy is the blue line. See? The yellow is what we used to

predict the energy, but the occupancy’s like that. So, if we don’t adapt

to this and control it correctly it’ll be all wasted—all the energy will be

wasted. So these are the ground truths between what is real and what

is sort of assumed, and we need to discover this continuously. It’s not a

one-time deal. Okay? That’s a technology we need to put in place.

And there are more and more sophisticated controls, and data is coming

out. We can see this very fancy stuff [that], dare I say, even architects

can understand because they’re just so visual that we can actually get

the whole of this. And at the end of the day, this is our performance. So,

remember this is what we designed, by the time we used it, we

calibrated it, we were [at] six percent, and when we actually compared

the proposed design model case with this, we were within six percent

accuracy. And after we calibrated based on real-use, we are down to

1.27%. So our model is 1.27% accurate, based on two, three years of real

energy use now.

And I have another PhD student continuing this work. So, when the

Department of Energy did a survey of industries, this is what they said,

“Well, you know, current estimate without calibration we can aim for

30%,” that’s what they said, asking the industry folks, “and then, by 2020

without calibration we might be able to get 15%, 10%.” This is their

target. And they cited me at the bottom, they say Professor Lam say[s]

we can do it for 5%. Well, it takes a lot of effort, it takes teamwork—but

the fact is it can be done. And the details…the devil’s always in the

details. I make that point. So following through construction, making

sure that what you design is what is built and not substituted away, or

shortcut away—it’s all part and parcel of the story.

00:56:48 00:57:24

And at the end of the day, this is what it looks like, everybody’s happy,

[there is a] high level of satisfaction of the occupant. And that is net zero

continuously. President Obama used it to hold the G20 in 2009. Obama

is very proud of Pittsburgh by the way. And toasted that. That year

Singapore was not invited. The year after, Singapore was invited to join

the G20. And since then Singapore had gone, 2011, 2013, 2017. So,

alright.

The Future: Wellness and Green in Design

Where’s the future going? So here in the tropics we are doing the same.

And that’s one of the many reasons [why] I’m back. Because it’s a very

different challenge to do this in [the] hot, humid tropics, so we’re

working very, very hard. The construction site is next to my office—I’m

literally living on the construction site right now, engaging with

everybody practically every week to get it right. And at the end of the

day, we hope it will serve our students and motivate and inspire them

over the next 50 years. That’s our mission, right?

So the next thing is really about wellness and green. We’ve got to couple

the two. Because for too long we have really neglected, as I said, the

human dimension—the physiological, psychological and so on. We’ve so

been enamoured with the economic side. It’s about time. And it is so

good that now, there is in fact an International WELL Building Institute

[IWBI] that has spent 50 million dollars over the last seven years doing

research with the Mayo clinic in a very serious way, about health of

occupants in buildings. Those of us who have been talking about this for

years and years, doing surveys didn’t really make much dent although

we have anecdotal stories about the benefits of healthy and green

buildings. It’s a hard sell.

But now we have scientific evidence that we should be able to do that.

And this has, in fact been launched and as you know, we signed an MOU

[memorandum of understanding], you may not know, NUS [National

University of Singapore] SDE [School of Design and Environment] signed

00:59:08

an MOU with Delos as well as the International WELL Building Institute

to further push R&D in this regard. And [at the] end of the month I’ll be

there to meet with their CEO and their Chairman. By the way, the CEO

of the IWBI is in fact a Founder of LEED [Leadership in Energy and

Environmental Design], the US [United States] Green Building Council,

Rick Fedrizzi. He retired but they pulled him back out to serve, which is

great. He will be able to marry the two.

So, [I’m] looking forward to this and you’re all welcome to participate in

this. And here is the final statement from the novel, back to the Tale of

Two Cities. “I see a beautiful city and the brilliant people rising from the

abyss. And in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and

defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and the

precious time of which this is the natural birth gradually making

expiation for itself and wearing out. Better times are coming.” And this

is Sydney Carton, the guy in the novel who lost the girlfriend to [Charles]

Darnay and… But at the same time, he was willing to sacrifice himself so

that Darnay can go back and be with his wife. So, there was a kind of a

redemption story underneath this whole thing—ultimate sacrifice, for

the better of the future.

So, there we are. And I’m very, very pleased to be able to do this too.

I’m looking forward beyond our next net zero, looking forward to these

well and green opportunities in Singapore, working with all the various

stakeholders to push Singapore along. Okay? Thank you very much.

Panel and Q&A Segment

Jeffery Neng 01:01:07

Earlier on I think [in] Professor Lam’s presentation, one of the slides he

mentioned about the National Library Building [NLB], and also the slide

also show[ed] that this building, NLB was conferred the Green Mark

Platinum way back in 2005. And it was also [at] the same time that the

BCA Green Mark was started, and we were very glad at that time

01:01:33

because when we were conceptualizing the Green Mark framework

about how building[s] can, we can actually evaluate the building[’s]

impact and performance way back in 2014 and 2013, we had no clue.

But we actually model[led the BCA Green Mark] after several very well-

established international rating systems in the world to get us started,

but we had a problem because we did not have any very good green

building at that time for us to benchmark and calibrate our standard[s].

And when we came to 2005, it was the right timing that NLB was just

completed and were [sic was] operating very well. So, we approached

the NLB to say, “Hey, we have a green building rating system, we call this

Green Mark and we want to use this to do the evaluation and see how

far can we actually use it to calibrate.” So it was [at that] time that [we

launched] the first version of Green Mark in 2005, and [it] happened

that…and it [made us] very glad that the NLB Building became our poster

boy of our BCA Green Mark at that time. It was [in] 2005, so now it’s

about 12 years ago. It was the first edition where we had the Green Mark

standard.

Now, today the Green Mark standard is into his 5th edition and [still]

undergoing many revisions. Many of these principles and concepts are

what was mentioned by Professor Lam, about day-lighting, about

modelling, about the CFD, which was probably not common ten years

ago at that time. And today, we are very glad that the industry is

embracing some of this performance design—high performance

building design into more building[s] in Singapore. And many of these

industries or companies are actually taking on some of this knowledge

and exporting the services in the region.

Now in view of the time, maybe I will just ask the first question to

Professor Lam. Prof Lam, you are now the Dean in NUS. Actually, I

wanted to ask about the question of the green-collar work force, in

particular, advice to those who are joining us in engineering and in

01:04:08

architecture—and also to those who are thinking of joining the built

environment industry.

What kind of advice could you give to them about, you know, how can

you excite them about the future in the area of green collar work force?


I think the first message that we need to convey to the students is that

they cannot learn and opt and later on, practice in a silo-ed way. I think

that’s a… I know it’s easy to say that it’s hard to do, because it’s a very

inherent system that we have, both in education as well as in practice.

By the way, I did a half-hour video, and I was asked a lot of question by

Joshua there. So, go watch the video, I’ve a lot of answers in that. But

the short of it is that we’ve got to lay that first foundation: that the

students must open their minds to absorbing multi-disciplinary input

and begin to understand the need to cross those disciplines and be

open-minded to learn everything and not just say, “No, that’s not

relevant, that’s not relevant. I just want to learn this and get out with a

degree”. That is not going to help.

So, teamwork has to be cultivated from the beginning. So in the

university we’re doing this now. There’s a lot of emphasis of broadening

the education base. You know, SDE, the School of Design and

Environment is a really unique set up in the world—to have architecture,

urban design, planning, architecture and then we have Department of

Building that has the facilities, management and construction

management and quantity surveying—all the way to real estate and

finance, and including industrial design—it’s all under one roof. It’s really

unique. And we should and must capitalise on that here in Singapore. I

keep making this point. You don’t know how precious that is, until you

are elsewhere where there is such a struggle to have even two

departments talk to each other. That is something that as Dean, I’m

trying to do very much to convince my colleagues and then, the students

to take hold of those opportunities. So that’s the direction.

On Screen 01:06:37

Oftentimes, people believe a zero-energy building is just a super low-

energy building with renewable energy capabilities. Are zero-energy

buildings more complex than that?


Regardless of how you want to label this sort of “energy state” I call it,

the first common principle must necessarily be reduction of

consumption—whether it’s going to be eventually net zero, net positive

or super low, everybody must drive their consumption down. There’s no

excuse not to do that.

It’s not a question of high-rise, low-rise, density. There are solutions to

those, to drive that to as low as we can. Now it’s not just technology, it’s

also human behaviour. So we’ve been focusing a lot on the technologies

and the science, and we have neglected how to understand the

interaction of people with our buildings.

We just design things and expect them to relate to it. It doesn’t work

that way. So we need to bring the human dimension into this much,

much more in order to even further drive down that “energy

consumption”. Then, we augment with technology, whether it’s

renewable or other things.

Just a quick point about one of the technical, sort of, solutions about

district systems. Today, district systems are still viewed as mechanisms

to sell more. Right? So that I can easily pipe it to my customers to cater

for [sic to] their various needs and uses.

I take a different view. District system is about balancing—its about a

conduit to optimize, so that those who have can put in and share, those

who don’t have—and this is all spatial and temporal related, meaning

it’s space-time related. That conduit is a facility to do that sharing and

optimization as a community. It’s a very different mindset than [sic from]

simply facilitating more sale. If we think of it that way, then I think, there

is a whole new scope of opportunities to drive these so-called net zero

or net zero carbon communities.

01:09:18

But unless we are able to deal with it or understand it that way, and deal

with all the necessary, you know, legal and codes and standards and the

economics of it, it’s going to be very…we will be limited to how much

net zero we can do, particularly in a place like Singapore.

On Screen 01:09:38

Looking back, what would you do differently? Given the technology

available and the trends, would you take those as better solutions for

energy savings?


Okay, well, thank you for your compliment. If I understand, your

question is: How can we introduce more greenery into the building and

the surroundings? Am I right? One aspect. What else do I want to do

differently? [Audience repeats question in the distant inaudibly].

Yeah, okay. It’s interesting. Good question. Anybody from ABB here?

Yeah, I was talking to some ABB colleagues the other day and they were

being tasked to go and look at the NLB because it’s been 15 years. It’s

time to [have a] relook at the system, upgrade and refresh and we met

and just off the cuff, he was saying, “You know, Professor Lam we went

to NLB, the client asked us to look, ‘What can be improved?’ and we

said, ‘Actually nothing.’” (Laughs) I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah, the

system is still working. No need to change anything”.

I was really pleased that some of those ideas that we talked about—plug

and play, adaptability—was kind of implemented in anticipation of

changes. And to have a third party tell me this, literally just two weeks

ago, I was really warm-hearted, I was really warm about that. Of course,

every building will continue to evolve and merge, what else can we do

better? Or you know, you might realize that there are some triple,

double volume, triple volume spaces now that is inside NLB, very grand,

very nice. That’s not the intent, you know?

The intent is for future expansion. So, the structure is made such that

later on, if you do need more floors, you can just take out the façade

where it is, put in some steel beams and voila! Deck it and you have extra

floors. It was also one of those very forward-looking ideas with the CE,

01:12:04

because you know there is high control, 100 meters. And we could have

built whatever—10 storeys, 12 storeys and then say future expansion.

That is normally the way. But the CE was very…he said, “No, no, let’s max

the cover and then leave room for future extension, so that [we can]

minimise disruption later on.” What a great foresight! So even that has

been looked into in terms of that situation.

The water system is there, they do have a water recycling [system]—so

what else can be done better? Maybe you know, I think the lighting,

obviously, could continue to do better in terms of energy saving with the

LED, better controls, you know. Just interestingly, that the early design

of the lighting was in the triple volume space, they shine it right down

and they needed 500 lux on the table, and that chewed up tonnes of

energy.

And I asked the lighting designer, I said, “Why do you need to use that

light to shine on your table? Can’t we use a desk light?” You know the

Library has desk lights, right? So, “Oh yeah, huh.” So [we] saved a lot of

energy and users can control. So I have to say I’m hard-pushed to say,

what else can be upgraded—there are garden in the sky, albeit it’s

always going to be… and I do see people sitting out there.

So it’s hard-pushed to say what else can be done other than perhaps

more smarter controls. I would like to, oh, maybe I would like to say, go

continue to monitor it, optimize the use and meet the user

requirements. As I’ve said, calibrate the model. Now, that part we can

do and if there’s funding, we would love to do that.


Actually, probably I’ll chip in here, it is a very interesting question about

what can you do more in NLB? I think what Professor Lam mentioned

here is, during the design[ing] 20 years ago, the team actually really

future-proofed some of the things. In fact today, if you try to compare

and benchmark [it against] the current Green Mark framework as a

means to see what more can you do—probably then we will be able to

find out, okay, maybe some of these are incremental.

01:14:39

For example, the lighting at the time, 20 years ago, LED was not the

common option. So probably, you know, you could have done this kind

of incremental change of using the smart LED that allows you to change

the intensity. Actually, another area, probably not at the time there then

was the air-conditioning—the chiller system. At the time about 20 years

ago, the technology versus today, that you are able to vary your tonnes

as well as the more variable fans and so on.

Today, I’m glad that, you know, our air-conditioning standards are one

of the world’s best, because of the learning that we have done, and

seeing some of the areas for improvement in some of the buildings that

we have come across, we are setting easily 0.7, 0.6 total kilowatts per

tonne today, in total. So the water side and today we are also

introducing the air side as well.

So some of these probably are very incremental but it’s quite essential

to look at the best at that time, as well as how we can improve over the

best of the best—and this is something that we need to work very

closely with the industry to continue to learn. And hopefully one day, we

will be having a net energy building or medium-rise where the SDE

building is building, maybe for a high-rise, super-low energy. How do [sic

are] we able to drive down the energy consumption as low as we can,

while maintaining the comfort that everybody is enjoying.

On Screen 01:16:22

In the first few years, the National Library Building was new, and had low

occupancy; how has that changed today, and what are the effects?


You saw the statistics, right up to now it’s still 140, in fact. And the folks

there who are operating the building, whom I know very well, from time

to time I check in with them, I said, how is it doing? They said, great. And

one of the many strategies that we had anticipated—because we can

never, as I said, predict what people would do, how many and so on—

you have to provide for that flexibility.

So now, there is this big push to be healthy, don’t take the lift just to go

one floor—we design for that, so that they could turn off the lift and

01:17:11

turn off the power without affecting everybody else. We zoned it that

way. You see? That time it was something we wanted to build in and

now, they actually say, “We turn off the lift, you walk, healthy for you.”

That saved a lot of energy, instead of [having] one person going up and

down, you know. So things like that. Again we, as Jeffrey said, we [are]

future proof. We thought about all this as much as we can, with the

support…

By the way, that building—and I got confirmation again from Winston,

—was at that time the cheapest government building in Singapore. I was

surprised. He said, “It’s true, it’s true.” And again, this is my reading of

it: one of the fundamental, and this is me explaining this, it may not be…

is that there was hardly any variation orders because we designed it, we

tested it, everything was upfront—no surprises. Not for the lack of

contractors trying to do things. Alright?

But time and again, because of the upfront statement of performance,

you either meet it or not. Whether you want to do alternatives. I learned

this lesson when I was a 27-year-old architect. They always bluffed you,

they said, “Oh, can save money”. Then when you get the bill, “Whoa!

Oh, you have to restock! We have to transport this and that and then

GST [gods and services tax”] and then dah, dah, dah.” Before you know

it, net zero. And we got an inferior product. Sounds familiar, huh? I

learned that in UK [United Kingdom], by the way.

So these are the things. Because of the minimal variation, we were able

to contain the costs—no surprises. But in buildings, you know, that you

heard a lot of this, when you run out of control, people want to sell you

the bells and whistles, even though you may not need it. And that’s

something we need to be very clear about moving forward.

On Screen 01:19:23

Will there be room for development in Robotics within the National

Library Building?


You know, at that time, the most futuristic thing and this is based on Dr.

Chris Chia, was this book loan checking system, where you can drop the

01:19:46

book and it scans and it returns. The book drop, the RFID [radio

frequency identification]. Dr. Chia has a PhD in Computer Science—I

don’t know if you know that. So he intro[duced], that is automation, if

you like, introduced [automation] back at that time. It’s state of the art.

But when you say other robotics, like robots moving around shelving

books, well, yes! That’s the future. Well, yeah, maybe, can be, like the

way they are cleaning Changi Airport. I absolutely think it’s feasible. But

yeah, so yes, I look forward to those days. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely

adaptable. No question.

Can I say a final closing if this is last?


Yeah, please, Prof Lam.


I have enjoyed working with the team. I have always enjoyed working

with the team because the results are one thing, but the friendship and

the team spirit is something that I always cherish. Point number one.

Point number two. What is the sustainability? We all say sustainability is

what we do for the future generation, right? I learned this from my

grandfather who came from China and Malaysia and he introduced,

when I was a little kid, how to do things well and how to do things that

last. And he would proudly show me his projects as a little kid.

The proudest thing that I can say today [is] that I can show NLB to my

grandson and granddaughter. They came and visited last Christmas. And

they absolutely enjoyed it. So, to me, that’s what it’s all about!

Sustainability, knowing that we are leaving something for the next

generation. That I’m most proud and most satisfied, in addition to all the

friendship that we’ve made over the years.

Thank you very much for coming and for your support.


Can you join me to thank Professor Lam. Thank you very much.

[Transcript ends at 01:21:47]

LECTURE INFORMATION

TITLE

A Tale of Two Cities Towards a Common Destiny of Sustainability and Resilience Through People-Centric Green Architecture

SPEAKER

Prof Lam Khee Poh

Provost’s Chair Professor Dean, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore

MODERATOR

Jeffery Neng

Deputy Group Director, Environmental Sustainability Group, Building and Construction Authority of

Singapore (BCA)

DATE

15 August 2017

LOCATION

JEM MND Level 6 Auditorium

DURATION

1 Hour 21 Minutes 55 Seconds

Note:

Readers of this document should bear in mind that the transcript is a verbatim recording of the

spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that may be inherent in the process. The

Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the text nor the views

expressed therein; these are for the reader to judge.

[ ] are used for insertions, after the interview. The information is not necessarily contained in the

original recording.

All rights in the recording and transcript, including the right to copy, publish, broadcast and perform,

are reserved to the CLC. Permission is required should you wish to use the transcript for any purpose.

clc lecture a tale of two cities · 8/15/2017 · rivers. and in fact, this is called the three...

Documents