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SECTION 6:
CASE STUDIES
Environmentally-sound Siting, Design And
Construction Of Buildings
Since the early 1990s, there has been a tremendous increase in the application of
sustainable design. In many countries, EIA legislation is now mandatory for large
and medium scale tourism developments, while passive solar design and energyefficiency
considerations has been incorporated into building codes.
In June 1993, the International Union of Architects and the American Institute of
Architects signed a joint Declaration of Interdependence for a Sustainable Future.
This declaration makes a formal commitment to place environment and social
sustainability at the core of architectural and building design considerations.
Developers should not be discouraged if sustainable design requires extensive
budgeting at the onset, for it will bring considerable overall savings later. For
example, PV roofing and double-glazed windows may be more expensive to
purchase, but these costs will certainly be absorbed by the energy savings made
when the building is in operation.
Case Studies on Environmentally-Sound Siting and Design
1. ING Bank, The Netherlands
(Source: Rocky Mountain Institute, Canada, and ING Bank, The Netherlands)
In 1978, the leading Dutch and European Bank ING (then known as Nederlandsche
Middenstandsbank, NMB) was considered stodgy and conservative. Needing a
new image and a new headquarters, the bank’s employees and board of directors
voted for constructing a building that was ‘organic, with the criteria to integrate art,
natural materials, sunlight, plants, energy conservation, low noise, and water’.
A multi-disciplinary team of architects, construction engineers, landscape
architects, energy experts and artists were commissioned to design the building.
They worked for three years on the design with ongoing input from the future
users. Construction began in 1983 and was completed in 1987.
ING Bank’s new head office, south of Amsterdam, is considered even today as an
important example of sustainable design. The Bank’s 2,400 head office employees
now work in a 50,000m 2 - building, broken up into a series of ten slanting, brickfaced,
precast-concrete towers. The ground plan is an irregular S-curve, with
gardens and courtyards interspersed over the top of 28,000 m2 of structured
parking and service areas. Restaurants and meeting rooms line the internal
street that connects the ten towers. The high-density residential, office, and retail
development surrounding the bank reinforces the image of a medieval castle with
its surrounding village.
Maximum floor depth was determined by the criteria that no desk could be located
more than about 7 metres from a window, and is directly related to the day
lighting design. Interior louvers are used to bounce daylight from the top third of
exterior windows onto the ceiling of office spaces. This design, in combination with
window-lined interior atriums that penetrate through the towers to the mezzanine
level internal street, provides a significant portion of the building’s lighting.
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