'Urban Farm Factory' wins international award

Switzerland-based Holcim, which owns 30 per cent of Siam City Cement (SCCC), Thailand’s second-largest cement producer, sponsors the foundation that handed a total of US$300,000 (Bt9.4 million) to 12 winning Asian teams.

Held every three years, it honours designs for “sustainable construction” that reduces carbon emissions and cuts waste and pollution, thereby safeguarding the environment.

Kasetsart University’s Dr Singh Intrachooto, who served as key consultant to Isavaret, said the recent floods in Thailand showed the need for back-up supply chains such as the team’s urban farms to cope with transport disruptions.

Isavaret, 32, says the project aims to “rebalance Bangkok’s over-dependence on supplies from distant locations and check over-industrialisation”.

His nine-member team included Jariyawadee Lekawatana, Phuttipan Asawakool, Vichayuth Meenaphant, Manassak Senachak, Piroj Chaimongkol, Chaiyot Pinitjirsamut and Marisa Charusilawong. The Silver Award includes a $50,000 prize.

SCCC managing director Philippe Arto said the team showed “how far Thailand has come in green innovation and technology”.

The $100,000 Gold Award went to a project in Jar Maulwi, Pakistan, for its “Cob and Bamboo School”. Cob is an inexpensive building material made from clay, sand, water and straw.

Built by German architect Eike Roswag, who dedicated his victory to “the people of Pakistan”, the education centre is for poor girls in a village near Lahore. Roswag’s work was recognised for its innovative qualities and ethical and environment standards, judges said. 

It also scored high on economic viability and aesthetic features.

The $25,000 Bronze Award went to Dr Kenneth King Mun Yeang of Malaysia for his “Eco-Retail and Commercial Building” in Kuala Lumpur. 

The 14-floor structure employs green features and has earned the support of the country’s Finance Ministry to build it in the city centre.

Six “Acknowledgement Prizes” went to runners-up with equally compelling projects.

Three special prizes went to the “New Generation” category. 

Student August Liau from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took the top prize for a plan to return Beijing as the “bicycle capital” of the world.

Two entries from India won the youth awards, namely Mishkat Infan Ahmen from the University of California, Berkeley for a town-revitalisation programme in Navi district, Mumbai; and Julian King from London Metropolitan University for her project called “Decentralised Sanitation System” in New Delhi.

The third Holcim Awards is the latest for the event that has taken place every three years since 2005.

To mark its success, Singapore’s Ritz Carlton Hotel served as the venue this weekend. It was poignant that the property that was built on reclaimed land was now celebrating green architecture, observers said in praising Singapore’s shift to become a centre for sustainable businesses.

Guest speaker Dr Nirmal Ishnani from the National University of Singapore’s architecture department called the awards a timely effort to combat climate change amid a ballooning world population of 7 billion.

He said “more than 60 per cent of people are expected to live in Asian cities in the next 20 years”, bringing grave challenges because it was “unsustainable”. 

Such problems as contamination, food shortages and disease that came with Bangkok’s flooding serve as a warning to 15 other Asian cities that are prone to inundation, Ishnani added.

Crowded mega-cities such as Dhaka, Mumbai and Ho Chi Minh are seen as facing similar problems.

Overpopulation is most acute in poor countries and their big cities where shortages of food, water and medicine, compounded by poverty and poor infrastructure, makes the trend of migration to cities a “time bomb”, participants said.

The Pakistan project upgraded a traditional building with effective low-tech measures through engineering and design. The earthen school Tipu Sultan Merkez created seven new classrooms in a school for poor families.

The building, including the earth-filled bamboo walls, was constructed from locally sourced materials. 

Intense research on cob construction during the project resulted in a significant increase in strength and durability, and extended maintenance intervals compared with traditional approaches. 

Jury head Wowo Ding, dean of architecture at Nanjing University in China, praised the project for propagating the use of new construction methods by the agrarian population and improving the local economic situation. 

“The new construction approach shows the rural community an affordable, high-quality and durable alternative compared with widely used but higher-cost and less environmentally compatible construction materials,” she said.