Green buildings

The office of British Ambassador Peter Beckingham looks out into the embassy garden and then to a spreading tree in the adjacent American cemetery.

The tree looks almost as old as the balete, home of the kapre Mr. Brown, that was planted during our colonial past in what is now the front yard of Malacañang Palace.

No high-rise is expected to be built within the cemetery grounds, home to the American Battle Monument, on McKinley Hill in Taguig’s Global City. And top British diplomats are assured of enjoying a room with a view that has become rare and precious in Metro Manila.

Congested, polluted Makati seems far away. Even on a rainy day, the downpour is soothing. The relaxing view is green, and the building itself is green – designed to meet environmental standards set by the British government.

Green structures typically require a steep initial investment, which is why the trend has been slow to catch on in developing countries. But green structures are energy-efficient, more livable and cost-effective in the long term. Inexorably, this is where the world is headed.

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The British embassy building collects rainwater, stores it in the basement and recycles it, using solar panels for water heating.

British architect Denton Cork designed the building to look like an object in a garden, nestled in the rolling terrain of McKinley Hill. Its façade slopes slightly toward a vertical rear block. Terraced gardens surround the building and a pergola leads to the entrance.

Though the building is made of metal, granite, concrete and glass, and there is tight security throughout the compound, it’s not quite the concrete jungle.

The building is one of just over 110,000 around the world that are BREEAM-certified.

BREEAM is the Environmental Assessment Method launched in Britain in 1990 by the BRE, or Building Research Establishment. BREEAM gives market recognition for buildings with low environmental impact.

The assessment method lays down criteria and a clear scoring system to gauge the “environmental performance” of a building.

Over half a million buildings worldwide are currently awaiting BREEAM certification. The method, originally created for offices and homes, is updated regularly, with the latest done last year.

Each building is given a rating of pass, good, very good, excellent or outstanding, with a corresponding certificate.

The criteria include the efficiency of managing the building as well as the promotion of the health and well-being of the structure’s occupants.

Apart from the expected focus on energy efficiency, water facilities, air quality, lighting, noise levels and proper waste management, BREEAM takes into consideration the environmental impact of the building: what it is contributing to ozone depletion, air and water pollution. The British estimate that building operations account for about 50 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions in the United Kingdom.

BREEAM also takes into consideration the building occupants’ access to transportation, parking and even cycling facilities.

Naturally, use of low-flush toilets, recycled construction materials and energy-efficient lighting fixtures earn points in the BREEAM assessment.

The BREEAM certification system has inspired similar versions in North America, Australia and France.

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Being environment-friendly does not come cheap. According to the grapevine, the new British embassy, nestled in a 1.2-hectare land that was bought from McKinley Hill developer Megaworld Corp., cost a whopping 10 million pounds (about $15.3 million). The British needed a special permit from the Philippine government to own a third property, including the land, during the 17 months that the building was being constructed by local architects Recio + Casas – the same company that built the Pacific Plaza twin towers.

Embassies are exempted from the constitutional ban on foreign land ownership, though this privilege is limited. Several blocks from the British embassy is the new building housing the Singapore embassy, where there is a lot of space for only about 40 employees. The South Koreans are also constructing their new embassy on grounds near the British.

Beckingham told me that embassies represent a foreign government’s commitment to the host country, and their new home — they moved in about 10 months ago — showed their level of commitment to the Philippines.

He is particularly proud to announce that the new embassy, despite its limited staff, has become so efficient that in January, it became his government’s regional hub for visa processing.

Call centers and manufacturing are not the only businesses that are being outsourced to the Philippines. The British embassy in Metro Manila is processing visa applications from Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

In the past 12 months the embassy, which used to be housed at the Locsin building in Makati, processed 90,000 visa applications. Beckingham said about half of those applications were outsourced from other Asian countries.

Amid the recession, with the euro and the British pound weakening, the number of Filipinos traveling to the UK has jumped by more than 20 percent.

Many are tourists or people visiting relatives. There are more than 200,000 Filipinos living in the UK, according to Beckingham. The country has become a top destination for Filipino nurses and other professional health workers. There are students and sailors.

London is one of the most expensive cities in the world, so other Asians are also taking advantage of the weak pound and visiting the UK or applying for student visas.

Processing those applications is made easier in a BREEAM-certified building.

In our country that is supposed to be a tropical paradise, it will take time before the government can afford to invest in green workplaces.

But the trend is slowly catching on among certain residential and commercial developers. These are places where you can enjoy the sight of old trees. These are places where you can breathe.