DAVAO CITY, Davao
— In view of the growing trend in green building or sustainable construction, please inform us of your moves of changing style and designs of your structures. Please give us much detail and examples of these changes as you can.
As a company that has its roots in the agricultural industry, the environment has always been something a priority for us. We continue to challenge ourselves on ways that we can be environmentally responsible. After all, what we’re building is not just for today, but for future generations. For instance, one common characteristic in our developments is open space. We normally allocate a large portion for parks and open space. Even for our future mid-rise condo project, we plan to build on less than 30% of the area. We also try to design our structures to maximize wind flow. You’ll see this in our house designs and clubhouse at Damosa Fairlane.
This is also one of the characteristics we will be highlighting in our condo project. We even make it a point to go down to the littlest of details. At Damosa Fairlane, we plant trees, which come from one of our farms, in each of the purchased lots.
Hence the term, “from our home to yours.”
Do the changes necessitate increase in cost? If yes, what aspect of green construction need added cost? In some cases, yes. Of course at the end of the day, we have a fiduciary duty to our stakeholders so we do have to make sure that we are within budget. This is really where the challenge comes in for us.
Kindly state which property development projects that are on going where you apply the principles and practices in green construction. As mentioned earlier, we strive to apply these principles in all of our projects. Currently these are being applied at Damosa Fairlane. These will be applied in our forth coming projects, namely our mid-rise condo project and mixed use development in Panabo City.
Do you believe that this new trend will continue for a long time to come and not just a fad?
Yes. These are positive developments in the industry. I believe as we move forward, new technologies and new designs will evolve which will further make for environmental friendly projects.
Please enumerate your new projects and state the outstanding features of these projects so we can help publicity for them.
Mid-rise condo project: 6 tower development with spectacular views of Samal Island. Over 70% devoted to open space.
Mixed use project in Panabo City: self-sustaining, master planned community, which will include residential, commercial, institutional, and tourism components. One of the major feature of this project will be the agro-tourism component. As Panabo City is the banana capital of the Philippines, we want to capitalize/promote bananas and other fruits by establishing a tourist site based on this. We are also exploring using “e-jeeps” or other environmental friendly modes of transportation within the development.
We intend to launch both of these projects by the end of this year/Q1 2015. As with our previous developments, each of these will be characterized by quality, deliverability, and community.
What are your distinct structural innovations that address problems on flooding and interventions in case of forces of nature like typhoons and earthquakes?
As a company, we normally work with well-known engineering firms with a strong track record. We like firms that actually have experience working on foreign projects in countries that have high standards for guarding against flooding and other natural calamities.
What element/aspect component of your design/project that utilizes green technology or contributes to healthy environment and ecology, water conservation and biodiversity?
We spend a lot of time on space planning. Our goal is to plan our structure in such a way that promotes optimal movement of wind. In turn, this will reduce the number of hours that air-condition units are used. We also employ ways of collecting rain water, which is then used for watering.
source: Edge Davao
