Green architecture in China

I'm growing increasingly interested in the developing -- and from an energy and environmental vantage-point, crucial -- story of green building in China. Here's how the director of the wonderful documentary Design:e2 sees things:



One piece I wrote at Isabel Hilton's invaluable web magazine China Dialogue starts constructing one version of the story:

Years before China completed its first certified green building, a team from Beijing went to meet with engineers in the US to discuss environmentally-friendly design. But when the Chinese team showed some early sketches to their American colleagues, the response was not what they were expecting.

The American engineers said the plans were completely unworkable – the lighting design, water systems, ventilation and so on would all to be redone. This setback left Gao Lin, the lead Chinese architect on the project, “looking completely shell shocked,” recalls Robert Watson, a senior scientist with the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, who advises the Chinese government on green construction. “He blinked and looked at me and said, ‘It’s like I’m seeing architecture for the first time.’”

Recently, I've followed up a little bit at Treehugger:

... as Beijing's 3rd annual international green building expo rolls into town, some recent developments have lifted our optimism for green building in China. First, after declaring it would stick to its goal of reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent by 2010, the government passed a draft law during last week's National People's Congress supporting a "circular economy" that would wed the "three Rs" with China's development...

Meanwhile, a new energy-efficient growth model (with possible new resource taxes) aims to tame that development, which is unsustainable now matter how you look at it. And then there was the passage of China's first property law, which could pave the way, so to speak, for smarter growth. Of course, no solution to China's problems is now possible without the participation of the market. No wonder that the state-run English daily carried a front page headline yesterday urging private developers to comply with current building laws and go green. The developers in China—and green capitalists everywhere—better be listening. “If the government has a policy, develops a standard and enforces it, then the market has to react,” says Yong Tao, a professor spearheading the US entry to a green housing showcase that will open alongside the Beijing "Green" Olympics next year. For a green construction market, he says, “the potential is there.” That's the thinking behind Beijing's 3^rd annual green building expo, which starts today. Slowly--slowly--green energy is building.

Stay tuned/