Photo Credit: The Henderson, Hong Kong by Zaha Hadid Architects for Henderson Land, Render by Arqui9
By Prof. Lapman Lee, Professor of Practice (ESG, FinTech, Governance), Convenor of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s Sustainable Finance Centre of Excellence, and APAC ICT Climate and ESG value proposition leader at Willis Towers Watson Today’s interview is with Kevin Ng and Johnny Yu, who is the Head of Sustainability of Henderson Land, whom I had the pleasure to share the stage with at the
To some peers, sustainability may be driven more by their focus on property investment and management, in addition to property development.
Willis Towers Watson Hong Kong Strategic Risk Conference on 11 October 2023 alongside industry veterans Donald Choi, CEO of Chinachem Group; Gill Meller, Legal & Governance Director of MTR; and Simon Tang, Chief Project Development Officer of the Hong Kong – Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park.
In the world of architecture, the passive design methodology considers the local climate conditions (cooling, daylight, temperature, and humidity etc.), building site conditions, and construction materials to create a building that is comfortable to tenants, while cost-efficient through energy efficiency.
1. Every well-established property developer has a sustainability strategy. How does Henderson Land differentiate itself from its peers and where does sustainability start? Kevin: While it may sound a tad cliché, sustainability and innovation at Henderson Land starts with the tenant and end-user in mind, which is contributed to our
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predominantly “user-centric” development strategy. 21
And nowhere is our sustainability approach more evident than in the actual design of our buildings on the drawing boards, where we adopt a “passive design” approach, technically speaking, going for nononsense slim construction first to reduce carbon emission or energy consumption.
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When we take these climate conditions into consideration, tenants can reduce the use of air conditioning and electricity, thereby achieving carbon reduction. That’s what we call pursuing sustainability in a sustainable way.
