Divination

So you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts. I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you. Books can take you only so far in this field.

-Sybill Trelawney-

Divination is a subject taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This subject teaches methods of 'divining' the future - or gathering insights into future events through various rituals and tools. The magic taught in this class, as well as the ability to say prophetic things is a branch of magic referred to as "divination."

We here at the office somewhat practice this art of 'divination' (yes, you heard it right, we are somewhat magical) - except we substitute that term with alternative and more-professionally-sound terminology - computational modelling.

Modelling in this context is a simulation approach to building design. In other words, we predict the performance of the building before it is built - this includes energy consumption, occupants thermal comfort, building thermal transfer value, electric and daylighting, indoor temperature and some other stuffs too.

For example, daylighting modelling means we predict how indoor daylighting will look like, in terms of graphics and amount of lighting available, inside the building. This building modelling is carried out using computer software, i.e. Ecotect, 3DS Max, Light Studio, Radiance - which I currently use as one of the modules in Virtual Environment.

It's no rocket science but I still think it's pretty cool.

So, give us a building design, preferably in proper architectural drawings. We'll run it down in our simulation program for whichever subject you wish to know. Should daylighting, for example, is your curiosity, we'll be able to tell you that how much area inside your building will receive good daylighting and also identify which part of that space criticially requires assistance from electric lighting. The objective of this exercise is to explore and maximize natural daylighting potential and optimize electric lighting design.

See basic sample below.

I choose Daylighting as the sample above because if I picked Energy Modeling instead, you'd just be seeing a table with a lot of numbers in it - which is fairly less attractive than the above shown image.

That's a bit of preview about what we do daily - well among other many things.  Perhaps, we're not that exactly different than a group of bomohs. Added with high-technology gadgets, with a magic bowl filled with clear flower-scented water, a bomoh will be able to tell you that, "Bangunan enchek nanti akan jadi sangat bagus, tapi mungkin sedikit panas. Kami cadangkan ambil tangkal ini, tanam kat belakang rumah enchek selama 2 bulan lengkap. Kemudian order la gelas dua lapis untuk ganti selapis gelas yang enchek guna untuk bangunan enchek tu. Pastu gali balik tangkal tu dan letak kat celah2 gelas tu nanti ye. Kompem sejuk elok seronok pengunjung datang,"

Yes, this is such a long entry just to say that - we do magic here.


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NJB

TSGBCA 2012

ARCHIDEX is perhaps the biggest event for the architecture community in the country. It assembles professionals from the architecture, interior design and the building industry and industry leaders - providing platform to keep them updated on the developments in the built environment, mingle and network with captains of the industry, besides sourcing for innovative products, designs and services.

ARCHIDEX 2012 was held from 4-7 July at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. In conjunction with the event, Tropical and Sub-tropical Green Building Alliance Conference (TSGBC) 2012 was held at the same venue. This was the third conference of its kind since October 2009, which was hosted by China Green Building Council.

TSGBCA is an alliance of green building councils (GBC) with shared interests in the environmental characteristics of the tropical and sub-tropical region. The GBC’s in this alliance are China, Singapore, Malaysia, Philipines, India, Indonesia and Australia. This third edition of the TSGBA 2012 conference celebrates the natural tropical environment and its inspiration to truly innovative design for the built environment. The main theme of the event was "Naturally Tropical Truly Innovative".

I was priviliged to be sent by GEDS to participate in this conference. It's an event about green buildings - of course I'm excited about it!

The first speaker of the conference was Ar. Boon Che Wee, Chairman of Green Building Index (GBI) Accreditation Panel. He updated the audience on the latest GBI certification status in Malaysia. There are currently 70 GBI certified buildings in the country. 

GEDS have delivered 2 GBI projects: Puteri Harbour in Nusajaya (GBI RNC Gold) and ASR Padu in Melaka (GBI NREB Certified)!!

Jane Henley, CEO of World Green Building Council, was there as well. She presented on the green building trend developing all around the globe. Malaysia falls under the Asia Pacific Regional Network. LEED is leading all green building certification tools with the largest number of buildings certified. BREEAM, DGBC, SB Tool and Green Star are among the other popular assessment tools.

She also highlighted an interesting point that the purpose of green building certification is different between countries – and sometimes can be very contradictory. For example, South Africa developed their green building industry to create more jobs. Green Mark in Singapore, instead, is to improve efficiency in works and reduce manpower. 

The rest of the main speakers in the conference include the followings:

1. Li Congxiao, Director CSUS Green Building on Green Building Assessment in China
2. Ar Tai Lee Siang on Urban Forestation in Singapore
3. Naning Adiwoso from Indonesia Green Building Council on Networking and Transformation
4. Rod Leaver, CEO of Lend Lease Asia on Green Sense – Cost to Value Mindset Shift
5. Tsou Jin Yeu from University of Hong Kong on Urban Eco-landscape Formation
6. Ken Yeang from TR Hamzah & Yeang on Biomimicry
7. Michael Budig from ETH Centre Singapore on Design of Robotic Fabricated High Rises

This would have been a novel (or a very lengthy blog entry) if I thought I gonna write a review for all speakers. Nevertheless, my personal favourite was the talk given by Professor Tsou Jin Yeu. He talked about GIS Overlap Analysis and its application on sustainable urban development. Perhaps it reached to me more because his works involve surface thermal monitoring on urban scale and that can provide valuable data for any energy modelling geeks, like myself. 

For example, we all know that it's good to have some landscape around a building. But no one knows how much good it actually brings. In typical green building certification process, credits are awarded if we preserve 20-30% of the land area with green landscape. However, it is unclear to what extent does that help us in terms of reducing the heat island impact.

The above presented system, the surface thermal monitoring on urban scale, can tell us that if you preserve 30% of your land area with green landscape, the outdoor temperature can be reduced by 4 degrees Celcius (if my memory served correctly) compared to no landscape area provisioned. This information can help ESD geeks, again such as myself, to strategize our landscape design and its direct contribution to the energy efficiency measures of the building. How cool is that? (I know it's so exciting!)

I shall stop now because it's starting to turn into a technical lecture. Call me up for coffee if you're interested to discuss about it. :)

There are other several separate mini sessions available throughout the conference. I would love to go to them all but that is only possible if I master the art of “Shadow Clone Jutsu” (my apologies to non-manga readers – it just means that I can duplicate myself to be at many places at the same time).

For more information on the conference, you can find at http://www.tsgbc2012.org.my/en/.

I have been to quite a number of green building conferences, seminars, talks in Malaysia (well, in KL mostly). It's encouraging to see more local case studies are coming up compared to the yester years where most stuffs were about overseas information. These local data were presented in the mini sessions, i.e. local GBI case studies, government policies, IEQ solutions for our own local tropical climate.

Although I personally find that the amount of local data is considerably small - we need more local researches! But the future is bright in the green building industry in Malaysia. We hope that more local researches and data shall come up soon in future green building events. 

And GEDS will be there soon - and we'll definitely let you know!

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NJB