Smart cities and imaginative construction processes
The second Building Specifiers Conference 2017 held in Colombo this week which discussed the importance of building specifications, also appeared to have become a forum to “agree to disagree” as some participants proposed that architects are dreamers while others said they are not dreamers but scientists.
Dishan Ferdinando, Managing Director, Access Eco Engineering, moderating a discussion called for comments on points made in the keynote address of Prof Hisham Elkadi, Dean, School of Built Environment, University of Salford, UK on futuristic buildings. One of the panellists asked whether Sri Lanka should understand the mistakes that other countries are making and make corrections or rush in the direction of development.
He said that buildings are produced in a blind situation where state policy and governance policy on building regulations are nowhere near the process.
He said that South Asia is copying and pasting without realising why “they want to go where others have gone” and questioned about the erection of the Lotus Tower and asked the question, “why should we be doing this to create things spending enormous amount of money which would have been very well spent for better use elsewhere.”
Another panelist suggested that this tower could be a monument for the future history and asked whether anybody would be ashamed of the ancient kings putting up stupas.
Prof. Elkadi, in his keynote address dwelling upon the future of the construction industry said that imagination is more important than knowledge, a message he wanted to share because he said that the future is like what is happening now. He said that they should not follow what is happening in the western world all the time, but develop their own system and pass all the trials they have been going through.
He said that he would talk about the future of construction industry and then find out how the specifications would fit into the future. He indicated that the construction industry is moving from the static idea of technology to the dynamic idea of smart future. It came as a very important development in the human nature and it is evident that many are moving to cities, pointing out that that cities would have problems when 50 per cent (of the population) move to cities.
Smart cities have a bigger vision for the world, he said, indicating that it is not just adding a sort of intelligent mobility, but much bigger.
“You go around the world, and everywhere else, every single government has a smart city programme and it is big business where by 2020 it would swell to a business of 41 trillion dollars,” he said.
The move from technology to hard technology to ITC, he noted relates to people and how the people with technology interact with the assets provides a holistic view of the cities.
Prof. (Ms) Chitra Wedikkara, Dean, Colombo School of construction Technology (CSCT) making the introductory remarks said that the construction services sector has witnessed a boom in the recent years with rapid urbanisation with the demand for construction, housing, high rise buildings, condominiums, hospitals, universities, highways, bridges and hotels.
She said that this conference was launched to answer the needs of the construction industry boom, to fill the vacuum created due to the need of formulating proper construction, maintain quality of construction and to introduce right and sustainable construction methods.
The ultimate aim, she said is to provide the architects, engineers and all other participants of the construction industry to have easy access to a variety of services that maintain the standards, access to products.