Builders focusing more on environmentally friendly features

Dr Jin Anotai, a lecturer in the department of environmental engineering at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thon Buri, said engineers and architects today had to design homes and other buildings with concern for the environment firmly in mind, and construction materials also should be environmentally friendly.

Buildings should be designed with waste-disposal systems, with the goal of zero waste having equal importance to the building’s beauty, he said.

Innovative design has to combine the viewpoints of both the architect and the engineer, so that a building offers functionality to meet the demands of end users and is also friendly to the environment.

Associate Professor Pirast Pacharaswate, a lecturer in the architecture faculty of Chulalongkorn University, said residential design should not only be about structural and architectural features. An architect has to take environmental concerns into account to consume fewer resources, while the home itself also has to be environmentally friendly.

The architecture should be responsive to the fact that weather conditions have become increasingly severe over the past few years. The right design can reduce environmental damage, he said, adding that this should be a clear and desirable concept for everyone, including Thais.

Thailand’s leading producer of construction materials, Siam Cement Group, has a policy of green products accounting for at least 30 per cent of its sales, which means it has to put new innovative products on the market every year, group president and chief executive officer Kan Trakulhoon said.

To support this goal, the group plans to double its annual research and development budget from an average of 0.5 per cent of sales to 1 per cent within the next three to five years. The R&D budget will be spent on developing innovative products and finding ways to save energy and cut waste at its plants, he said.

Siam City Cement is another leading construction-material business providing green building products to the market. The company benefits from technology transferred by its major shareholder, Switzerland’s Holcim group.

“We have been developing green products since 2007, not only making innovative products but also renovating our cement plant to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions,” company adviser Chantana Sukumanont said.

Meanwhile, the Italcementi group, which holds a major stake in Thai company Asia Cement, also aims for materials that are less toxic, save energy and water, and produce less waste.

Italcementi is an Italian multinational that produces cement, ready-mix concrete and construction aggregates. It is the fifth-largest cement producer in the world.

The group’s innovation director, Enrico Borgarello, said the company had been developing innovative products for 10 years and during the last five had started to introduce innovative commercial products. It has set a target for environment-friendly products to account for 5 per cent of total revenue this year.

 

Green homes a must

Home construction this year will focus on design, location, and environmental concerns.

With high competition in the market, property firms have to reduce their construction costs by cutting waste. This will push all of them to use innovative construction processes. Prefabrication systems are one way to do this.

“We set up a system to reduce waste in our construction process while also designing our residential units to match the country’s environment,” Pruksa Real Estate president and CEO Thongma Vijitpongpun said.

Sansiri president Srettha Thavisin said his company had tried to reduce waste by making its units smaller, which also reduced construction costs. 

But residential units also require environment-friendly designs. For example, Fragrant Property designs its Circle brand condominium projects under the theme of “eco-friendly innovative living”.

Most Circle condominium projects have solar panels to generate electricity for use in common areas, heat produced by air-conditioning units is recycled to heat water for residents to use.

The projects also recycle water for irrigation, with household wastewater treated in septic tanks before passing through three separate types of filter: multi-filter, carbon filter and micro-filter.

Supalai, meanwhile, applies “passive” design to its high- and low-rise projects, which takes the environment into full consideration by taking account of wind flow, sunrise and sunset direction, and the use of green construction materials.

CEO Prateep Tangmatitham said passive design could also be cost-effective, enabling the firm to cater to its customers’ budgets.

At a time of high competition when prospective buyers are comparing homes in the same location that cost about the same, an environmentally friendly design could be the deciding factor for customers.