Vietnam adopts green building strategies

Green building is an integral part of urban and rural sustainable development, contributing significantly to a country's sustainable development, said Pham Ngoc Dang, President of the Green Building Council Vietnam and the Vietnamese Association of Construction Engineering and Environment.

During the workshop, the international audience was introduced to Vietnam's national strategy framework for developing green buildings up to 2020. This framework covers nine major issues of green buildings, including environmentally sustainable building site planning and design, efficient use of energy, water and materials, air quality inside the building and waste minimisation.

By 2020, Vietnam aims for 30% of newly-built and renovated buildings using the State budget and about US$10 of those using private funds to qualify as green buildings. These numbers are expected to double by 2030.

Green buildings are also fuelling a return to traditional materials and methods, said Andreas Loffler, Dean of the Hft Stuttgart‘s Architecture and Design School and Director of the Centre for Integral Architecture.

Loffler proved this point with a case study of buildings in the informal areas of big Columbian cities, which typically use adobe bricks and bamboo boards.

Pham Duc Nguyen from the National University of Civil Engineering and Tran Binh Minh, E4G's technical manager, introduced several appropriate architectural techniques for Vietnam, where the climate varies considerably from region to region.

These included passive design solutions like covering openings to protect the building from solar heat, changing the shape of the building and laying out interior spaces according to heating requirements.