COMPLEXITIES IN ASSURING THE PERFORMANCE A GREEN SURFACE

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The greening of Singapore can be said to have begun in 1968 (Guillot: 2008) when the government first began transforming Singapore into what is known as the Garden city . Over the years, however, due to global warming, the use of greenery has started to take another dimension that of mitigating the Urban Heat Island (UHI). With the advent of green technology, building’s roof tops and walls are been increasingly greened, island-wide. In the same spirit, with the desire for energy efficiency questioning the performance of the greenery against that of a wall or roof has become inevitable. This dissertation thus seeks at looking into the performance of the green wall and roof and identifying components ensuring the proper functioning of these green surfaces. Guidelines governing the green wall and roof will be used as a working method for evaluating built examples. While it was found that most countries included Singapore do not have an exclusive guideline for their green surfaces, Germany created one called the FLL (FLL: 2002). The recent study done at Hortpark will be used as a basis for highlighting the performance of a green wall. Using the FLL guideline and the Hortpark study as a methodology applied in the tropical context will thus help in defining the performance of a green surface. This dissertation will also look at the current state of green surfaces present in Singapore and identify the problems or beginning of problems that are being faced by using such an active material. Ultimately, this dissertation aims at being a performance guideline for architects and people in the industry dealing with greenery to get an insight of possible problems in the performance of a green surface and to possibly pursuit more research on the areas highlighted.