Eco-architecture contest throws up winning ideas on building design
By
FOURTEEN fourth-year architecture students from the National University of Singapore showed how they could harness the elements to cool, light and block out noise and dust in their buildings.
These are some of their winning ideas in a faculty eco-architecture competition organised for Clean and Green Week:
Funnel wind through a building. Mr Lew Kok Wai, 24, designed a community centre that straddles Rochor Canal.
The buildings are built on both sides of the canal and face the prevailing wind, acting as a wind funnel. The water in the canal helps cool the breeze.
Thus, the building would be kept cool, without using air-conditioners.
Place solar panels or large trays on the roof to collect rainwater.
Miss Teresa Pang, 24, uses collected rainwater to wash floors, or to be pumped into buildings to cool the interiors of community centre she designed, also for the Rochor area.
Her colleague used solar energy to heat water or power moveable sunshades at the centre.
For courtyards in such places as community centres, student Thomas Kraack suggested using creeper-covered trellises instead of concrete walls to filter noise and dust from the streets.
The creepers would bring greenery to the courtyard as well as recycle the polluted air, and improve air quality in the courtyard.
Integrate the geography of the site into a building’s design.
Mr Patrick Tan integrated the relief of Fort Canning Hill into his design of a music school.
This resulted in a collection of small buildings that follow the relief of the hill, rather than cutting into the hill for a large building.
Among the more ambitious suggestions was using walls of water or air to insulate building interiors from the sun’s heat.
Students said that since water and air are bad conductors of heat, the building would be cooler and would not require as much air-conditioning.
Source : The Sunday Times, November 6, 1994
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