Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has won the Green Mark Champion Award from the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) for environmental sustainability.
Presented to a select group of organisations each year, the Green Mark Champion Award is Singapore’s top accolade for sustainable building design. To qualify for the prestigious Champion status, at least 10 projects must have attained Green Mark standards. Out of 18 Green Mark-certified projects, NTU has eight projects that achieved Green Mark Platinum – the highest possible award for an individual building – while another three won GoldPLUS and Gold awards.
The centrepiece of NTU’s campus is the award-winning iconic building that houses the School of Art, Design and Media with its signature sloping green roof. Another unique building that will be ready later this year is the Learning Hub located next to NTU’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
NTU Provost, Prof Freddy Boey will receive the award from Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry and National Development at a ceremony on 22 May.
Commenting on the University’s win, Prof Boey said, “The BCA Green Mark Champion Award is a momentous recognition of NTU’s commitment towards sustainability. Buildings are a prime example of how human systems should integrate seamlessly with the natural environment, and NTU is determined to be a leading player in this effort. By implementing sustainable design across the campus, we can inspire our NTU community to better appreciate our environment and be a model for others to efficiently use our natural resources. Collectively, we can make a positive impact on our planet, which will benefit the future generation."
Sustainability is the pinnacle of NTU’s five multi-disciplinary Peaks of Excellence or research areas where NTU plans to make a global mark. The others are future healthcare, new media, innovation and the best of East and West.
NTU is a global leader in sustainability, having garnered more than $1.2 billion in competitive research funding in the area. Today, all first-year NTU undergraduates take a compulsory module in environmental sustainability. And starting this August, NTU will introduce an undergraduate programme Environmental Earth Systems Science that is focused on Asia. In addition, the NTU Campus Masterplan, which guides the physical development of its campus through the next decade, is also based on sustainability principles.
The University’s upcoming residential halls at North Hill and Nanyang Drive are among this year’s winners of BCA’s Green Mark Platinum award. The Platinum award is a national benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. The award is based on points earned for satisfying specific green building criteria.
The new NTU residential halls are installed with a variety of energy and water- efficient features. This includes high-efficient lights with motion and photo-cell sensors, as well as energy-efficient lift systems that can be set to “sleep” mode during inactive periods. Carbon dioxide sensors in the air-handling units and basement floors further help to lower the amount of energy used and maintain a healthy indoor air quality. The buildings’ design also includes materials with high levels of recycled content, such as green cement and recycled concrete aggregates.
At the Nanyang Drive residential halls, the buildings' north-south orientation and numerous windows help to promote natural ventilation. In addition, the building envelope helps to keep off the heat of the sun and further reduces reliance on air-conditioning. Solar cells and solar heaters have also been installed to save energy.
NTU’s upcoming Learning Hub is another Platinum award project that will be ready later this year. The Learning Hub has adopted a passive displacement ventilation system as a more sustainable alternative to conventional air conditioning. The innovative system works on convection theory where air is first cooled to become denser and settle to the floor. This is then replaced by warmer air moving up from below, causing constant flow of convection that cools the indoor space continuously. This enables NTU to save energy while providing a quieter air conditioning system, as no fans are needed for air distribution.
As a green campus, trees are another important part of NTU’s rich biodiversity of flora and fauna. NTU takes care of about 10,000 trees across the 200-hectare campus which is the largest in Singapore. To enhance the green surroundings of the new halls, about 70 yellow Flame of the Forest trees were transplanted to Nanyang Crescent. Another 57 trees were preserved to ensure that they remain integrated with the campus landscape.
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Media contact:
Feisal Abdul Rahman
Senior Assistant Director (Media Relations)
Corporate Communications Office
Nanyang Technological University
Tel: (65) 6790 6687
Email: feisalar@ntu.edu.sg
About Nanyang Technological University
A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, and Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences. It has a new medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, set up jointly with Imperial College London.
NTU is also home to world-class autonomous institutes – the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering – and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI), Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N) and the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight (ACI).
A fast-growing university with an international outlook, NTU is putting its global stamp on Five Peaks of Excellence: Sustainable Earth, Future Healthcare, New Media, New Silk Road, and Innovation Asia.
Besides the main Yunnan Garden campus, NTU also has a satellite campus in Singapore’s science and tech hub, one-north, and a third campus in Novena, Singapore’s medical district.
For more information, visit www.ntu.edu.sg