Architects to design expo 'invisible' green buildings

For architects like Kuo and Chang, there is no financial incentive to pursue the highest level of certification, and local clients rarely ask for truly sustainable buildings. Chang acknowledges that designing “green” may have even cost the firm money in the past.

With nothing to gain, some of their peers may question their sanity. So why do they pursue diamond-level certification for their projects?

“Because it offers a new challenge,” said Chang, who has been interested in green building throughout her career. “As a professional, you want to push yourself into new areas instead of doing the same old thing, and this is the direction of the future.”

The Beitou Public Library became the first building in Taiwan to be diamond certified, and remains only one of three in the country to have received the highest certification to date. But while Kuo and Chang had four years to finish the library, they have only 20 months to complete the Xinsheng Park project — 10 times larger than the Beitou project.

Yet the time pressure does not mean the architects will hold back on green design features.

To save energy, the three buildings will have solar panels on their rooftops that will generate enough power to run each of them for 2-3 hours a day and cool air will be fed into the pavilions from underground vents.

Rather than using tap water to irrigate plants at the expo, they will draw water from the neighboring Keelung River and purify it naturally on the expo site to do the job, reducing water consumption by an estimated 60 percent.

Also, the buildings are equipped with automatic temperature monitoring systems that can detect temperature changes outside of the pavilions and adjust the indoor air conditioning as necessary.

Another important sustainable green feature and one that will keep temperatures inside the pavilions down will be to green the rooftops of the pavilions.

These wild rooftop grasslands will house plants during the exposition and then be home to small shrubs after the show.

“The buildings' rooftops will be like the Chingtiangang grassland on Yangmingshan,” and the grassland on one of the buildings will extend to the ground area to create the sense that the building is part of the park, Chang said. Like the Beitou Library,” these buildings may become landmarks, but they won't be landmarks you go to see. You'll go to experience them, to experience the relationship between man and the environment, but it won't be a visual experience,” Kuo says.

“We hope people will sense the spirit of energy saving and carbon emission reduction from the green buildings,” he adds.

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