Green Housing

This article was written by Coral Lee, translated by Paul Frank, and published by the Sinorama Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 10) in October 2005. It reports that in order to tackle the problem of green-house gases, construction companies in Taiwan and other countries are increasingly promote green building, also known as green architecture.

According to this article, Taiwan has adopted a green-building labeling system for its subtropical climate, with four evaluation categories (ecology, energy saving, waste reduction, and health) and nine environmental indicators. "Taiwan is a pioneer in this area," this article points out. "Of the 14 countries that have established such a labeling system, [Taiwan] is the only one in the subtropics."

The concept of green housing challenges traditional views in Taiwan's construction industry. People's ideas about architecture are also changing, as they now begin to pay attention to the positive and negative impacts their housing may have upon them. One good example is the sick building syndrome, which is caused by the poor quality of the air in buildings with glass facades.

Large-scale building compounds such as the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei are also examined to see if they meet green building biodiversity standards. Do manicured lawns and trees hinder symbiosis between insects and soils and keep birds from perching on the branches? Does all the gardening work require too much water and generate too much pollution? This article asks many interesting questions like these and provides good and useful arguments about green housing.