Building for sustainability and wellness

In Singapore, the built environment consumes about 38 percent of the country's total electricity use, and buildings—especially those with centralized air conditioning—use a lot of water. With both clean water and electricity consuming significant amounts of fossil fuel in production, building efficiency has a direct impact on the environment.

Our SAS development projects intentionally focus on resource optimization through smart technology and practical engineering. Our goal is to reduce our use of energy and water, limit waste production, and reduce our overall operational costs. Alongside these goals, we want our buildings and related systems to act as educational tools for future leaders in the areas of sustainability methods, technologies, and approaches in a modern city context. Finally, our buildings have a strong focus on enhancing wellness and student performance through evidence-based building design. Our wellness goals include plenty of natural light, improved indoor air quality, enhanced acoustics and reductions in background noise, and links to nature.

The best measure of a building’s sustainability is the extent to which its systems and materials work together to achieve “maximum integration” for full coordination and best results. Our cooling strategy is based on the entire space of the buildings and usage patterns and integrates performance characteristics of windows and glass, natural air flow, insulation materials, building placement and site layout, landscaping, flooring, and other elements. Altogether, these enhance the buildings’ operations and reduce resource consumption.

There are a number of “Green Building” certification schemes worldwide that we are using to guide our building design. One of the most stringent, and the one designed specifically for buildings in tropical regions, is the Singapore Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark scheme. Our buildings are designed to achieve the highest level of sustainability recognized by this scheme: Green Mark Platinum (Super Low Energy). At this level, they will be independently certified to be at least 40 percent more efficient than similar building types in Singapore. We are also using standards such as WELL and the Living Building Challenge to ensure that we take a holistic approach to all aspects of the building throughout the design process. 

For more information on these aspects of our building program, please contact Director of Facilities and Services Simon Thomas.