Nan Fung’s endeavor for sustainable city development is ongoing and evident in its portfolio of residential, commercial and revitalization projects. In Airside, our vision is to create a people-oriented environment, social inclusive community with exemplar environmental performance and advanced sustainability features. Our team has developed the Sustainability Development Framework – CO6 Metrics for this project.  The CO6 Metrics includes Community Hub Creation, Comfortable & Healthy Environment, CO₂ Reduction, Conspicuous Performance & Consumption and Cost Effective Smart Technology, which echo with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG).

With this framework, sustainable features and practices are shaped to establish our project to be the benchmark in the new Central Business District 2 of Hong Kong. The project achieved the highest ratings across five major and globally recognized green building certifications, namely LEED v4 Core & Shell Platinum (pre-certified), BEAM Plus New Building Platinum (provisionally achieved), WELL v1.0 Core & Shell Platinum (Pre-certified), BEAM Plus Neighbourhood v1.0 Platinum (final certification achieved) and China Green Building Label 3-Star (final certification achieved).

To nurture luxury outdoor space in dense Hong Kong for community hub, the development cascades from office tower to retail podium to create lush rooftops, terraces and grounds for open-air space shaping for cultural, social and public engaging activities. Overlooking the Kai Tak River, future Kai Tak Sports Park and Victoria Harbour, visitors not only enjoy the waterfront view from podium roof, but interact at the publicly accessible, extensive with 1,700m2 greenery open spaces for activities, respite and foliage.

Considering the impact of prevailing wind and local microclimate at Kai Tak area, microclimate studies were performed, and an urban window between two towers was designed to significantly improve ventilation of the podium. With thermal comfort a high priority, sitting areas were also designed to use innovative cooling panels and air induction units will be installed. PV panels will also be installed to provide shading and, from initial studies, can also generate enough electricity to cover average consumption of 700 residential units in Hong Kong.

The building’s orientation also maximises sunlight, and through our glare studies and advanced computations, we optimized the profiles and sizes of the façade’s vertical shading fins to reduce solar heat gain but preserve our fabric-like façade design – a flashback to the Group’s founding business and its roots as a textile manufacturer.

To ensure a desirable and healthy environment, high performance air filtration devices, e.g. MERV14, carbon filter and UV lamp will be installed in building by minimizing both the outdoor and indoor air pollutants. Indoor air quality will be monitored by real-time air quality sensors. Both the air filtration devices and real-time air quality sensors contribute on achieving the WELL v1.0 certificate platinum grading.

The built-in Automatic Refuse Collection System encourages tenants to separate recyclable waste from general waste, which is weighted, transported and stored in a centralized and enclosed facility in a hygienic manner. It allows the development to be future-proof with the industry moving towards green leases and the potential soon-to-be-launched mandatory waste charging scheme in Hong Kong.

Adjacent to the public cycling path, Airside will have Hong Kong’s first automatic underground bicycle parking drum. It aims to create a cycling-friendly environment by embodying a new user friendly, simple and automated bicycle parking experience to further encourage green transport.

Passing on the development team’s 5D BIM model to the property manager, the embedded network of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and sensors and a sophisticated sub-metering network feeds real-time information to a digital platform which consolidates data sourced from disparate building systems and will use machine-learning processes to evaluate and forecast building performance to formulate building operation and maintenance saving strategies.