Sri Lanka urged to promote sustainable construction

Sri Lanka has been urged to promote initiatives in support of sustainable. approaches to the provision of housing and infrastructure development as the country has a long and proud history of building respecting local needs and conditions.

This request came from the General Manager of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction Edward Schwarz in an interview with The Sunday Times FT. He added that “Local buildings more than hundreds of years back show clear evidence of utilizing natural (passive) cooling”. He said the diverse architectural landscape which shows the influence of both religious traditions and the colonists is a valuable resource of Sri Lanka.

While it is critical that heritage architecture is restored and maintained, in other countries it has been demonstrated that upgrading can be achieved in a sustainable manner, improving the built environment in keeping with social, environmental and aesthetic traditions.

“There is also an opportunity to do things "right", from the very beginning here and to encourage sustainable responses to the technological, environmental, socio-economic and cultural issues affecting building and construction. With such large-scale demand for housing and infrastructure to keep pace with dynamic growth, applying the criteria for sustainable construction is an investment in the future of Sri Lanka,” he said.

Schwarz called upon Sri Lankan authorities to promote best practices, pioneer fresh solutions and inspire young architects and engineers, planners, developers and contractors to adopt new, sustainable parameters for all their building projects.

Head of Sustainable Development of Holcim Lanka Ltd Rathika de Silva said that “as with all its housing projects, Holcim is building sustainability into the Sri Lankan scheme. Working with the country’s National Building Research Organisation, it has identified a range of local building products to complement the cement that the company itself provides. By creating markets for locally-sourced tiles, clay bricks and steel, for example, it is directly benefiting local producers and distributors.”

Schwarz was in Sri Lanka to support Holcim Lanka in promoting concepts of sustainable construction. Increasing the number of entries from Sri Lanka for the second Holcim Awards competition was an important goal of his visit and the local publicity campaign of Holcim Lanka. There are five regional ceremonies to be held in New Delhi (for region Asia Pacific), Madrid (Europe), Montréal (North America), Mexico City (Latin America) and Marrakech (Africa - Middle East) in October/November 2008, and then the global Holcim Awards ceremony which will be held in Switzerland in 2009.

The competition entertains innovative, future-oriented and tangible sustainable construction projects from around the globe and provides prize money of US$2 million per three-year competition cycle. One objective of the Holcim Awards is to progressively generate a worldwide community of recognized practitioners of excellence in sustainable construction.