Building & Cooling Singapore in an Era of Climate Change
Learn more about how the Cooling Singapore research agenda interfaces with the nation’s development plans, highlighting the goals of mitigating the urban heat island (UHI) effect and improving outdoor thermal comfort.
Last updated 1 March 2025
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Lecture details
Building & Cooling Singapore in an Era of Climate Change
8 August 2019
4.00 pm – 5.30 pm. Registration from 3.30pm, seated by 4.00pm
URA Function Hall
1 SILA CPD pts, 2 BOA-SIA CPD pts, 1 SIP CPD pts, 1 PEB PDU pts
Lecture video
Synopsis
As global temperatures rise, climate change impacts and resilience measures are of increasing concern to Singapore. This event will explore how the Cooling Singapore research agenda interfaces with the nation’s development plans, highlighting the goals of mitigating the urban heat island (UHI) effect and improving outdoor thermal comfort. The perspectives covered include academia, planning and implementing agencies, and the healthcare sector, who are collectively engaged in built-environment projects ranging from university expansions and HDB towns, to planning for future medical campuses.
Lecture report
“The trap is everybody thinking it’s either mitigation or adaptation, but the case is that you need both. While climate change is global, the impacts, the vulnerabilities, the risks that we face as a city are local or regional in nature and it is best to adapt to them at that particular scale. The best sort of adaptation policies are when all your different stakeholders, from governments, to businesses, to everybody else who cares about the future climate all align themselves in the same direction.”
- Dr Winston Chow
As the world warms up, there is no way for Singaporeans to avoid using air conditioners. But the tropical city-state can also beat the heat with the right mix of actions.
Raising air-con temperatures to 25 degrees Celsius, harnessing urban design to protect buildings from the sun and heat as well as district cooling—cooling buildings through the centralised production of chilled water—are just some more efficient ways to better manage rising temperatures, said researchers Dr Gerhard Schmitt and Dr Winston Chow.
Speaking on the CLC panel “Building & Cooling Singapore in an Era of Climate Change” in August, the duo from the Cooling Singapore initiative explained how Singapore is facing the “double whammy” of climate change and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, which creates more intense temperatures. UHI is caused by built-up areas, such as the Central Business District, heating up than more rural places because of a variety of urban heat sources such as emissions from vehicles, air-con and building materials.
Thus, Singapore has to grapple with the existential question of what kind of city it seeks to be in 2050, said Dr Schmitt, who is the founding director of Singapore-ETH Centre which oversees the Cooling Singapore programme.
Fellow panellists and practitioners painted a picture of what this could look like. Adele Tan, the group director (Strategic Planning) at the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), said planners can mitigated UHI by laying out roads and land parcels so that airflow is not impeded by buildings. In addition, the Housing and Development Board ensures public housing is well-ventilated and green, while policies that preserve Singapore’s vision of a “city in a garden” can help ensure its people stay comfortable too.
Architect Michael Leong shared his firm’s upcoming project, the Woodlands Health Campus (WHC), which is designed to stay cool in Singapore’s climate. Inspired by the rainforest, the 1,800-bed hospital by SAA Architects is seamlessly integrated into an adjacent park, enabling the plants to absorb heat which would have been reflected into the windows and wards. Blocks are also oriented to the north-south to enable natural ventilation, while all roads are situated underground and lead to basement carparks, in order to create a “park-like” ground level that is free of cars.
Leong added that one challenge for such projects is convincing developers that going green does not always equate to being more expensive. “If we [plan green features] at an earlier stage of the project, we are able to become green at a much lower cost,” he said.
Other challenges brought up by fellow panellists include the need for a strong political will to take on climate change initiatives, addressing inequalities in getting access to cooling technologies and finding the appropriate solution suitable for the site. For instance, Tan said that planting more trees may not always provide a cool environment, as dense greenery can reduce wind flow and increase humidity.
Everyone matters
In talking about climate change, Dr Chow reminded the audience that one cannot ignore the “elephant in the room” — Singapore’s oil and gas industry, with Jurong Island being a massive emitter of greenhouse gases. While it is easy to label the companies in it as “evil polluters” and saying we should “kick them out”, the reality is not so simple, said the associate professor of humanities at the Singapore Management University. Instead, they form an important part of the solution and have a vested interest to get “on board the sustainability train”.
“There’s always that criticism that there is corporate greenwashing, but they are taking steps towards increasing research and development in renewable energy,” said Dr Chow. “It is to their interest and their bottom line, because if they don’t do it, other companies will. As a private sector entity, it is to their long-term benefit and their survival.”
Other panellists also supported this view, and Dr Schmitt compared the process of achieving a sustainable future to a “moon landing”, where all government agencies and industries must work together. Tan added that Singapore has already reaffirmed its commitment to reduce its emissions in the Paris climate agreement and has imposed a carbon tax.
Beyond coming up with solutions and policies, the panellists also spoke about the importance of creating a positive mindset shift and cultural change. One example is the increasing presence of urban rooftop farms. Although they may not reduce the overall UHI effect much as compared to planting trees on the streets to provide shade to passers-by and the road, they can have an enormous “social and cultural impact”, said Leong. He recalls attending a staff meeting at a conference room which was right next to volunteers harvesting cabbage at a rooftop farm.
“It sends the message that you can be comfortable in a naturally ventilated space, in passively designed architecture, even if doesn’t translate into real dollars and cents savings,” he said. “That message is very powerful and people realise that you do not need to rely on air conditioning.”
This report first appeared in the Sep 2019 Better Cities newsletter. The lecture was also featured in the Straits Times "Experts raise cool ideas to tackle urban heat in S'pore" on 23 Aug 2019.
About the Speakers
PANELLIST
Dr. Gerhard Schmitt
Professor of Information Architecture, ETH Zurich
Founding Director of Singapore-ETH Centre
Dr Gerhard Schmitt is professor of Information Architecture at ETH Zurich and founding director of the Singapore-ETH Centre. As the centre’s director, he leads an interdisciplinary team in addressing challenges on urban sustainability, liveability and resilience. This is achieved through research programmes including the Future Cities Laboratory, Future Resilient Systems, Cooling Singapore, and Natural Capital Singapore. He currently leads the Cooling Singapore project, aimed at mitigating the urban heat island effect; and the Big Data informed Urban Design and Governance project. Prof Schmitt was awarded the European Culture of Science Award in 2010 for initiating the transition of Science City in ETH Zurich towards a zero-carbon emission campus.
PANELLIST
Ms Adele Tan
Group Director (Strategic Planning)
Urban Redevelopment Authority
Adele Tan is Group Director of Strategic Planning at URA, responsible for long-term land use planning for Singapore. In her 20 years of public service, she has been involved in a broad range of land use planning areas, from planning for an aging population, to developing a master plan for our underground space.
PANELLIST
Ms Yan Yan
Director, Campus Planning
Woodland Health Campus
Ms Yan Yan is one of the pioneering members of the planning team for the Woodland Health Campus. She is responsible for the overall hospital and campus planning, and operations planning with a key focus on service redesign and innovation to improve care and patient experience, as well as service delivery and efficiency. Ms Yan Yan has a diverse experience and has worked in almost all parts of the healthcare ecosystem. Over the past 15 years of her career, she has taken on strategic roles including Regional Health System development, Home and Community sector development, operations of primary care services and leading Health IT and Informatics projects. To her, the integrated health campus development is almost like “completing the circle”, where she can contribute her knowledge and experience in primary, acute and community care; and realize her aspiration in building an integrated system.
PANELLIST
Dr Winston Chow
Full-time Faculty, School of Social Sciences
Associate Professor of Humanities
Singapore Management University
Dr Winston Chow is an Associate Professor of Humanities at the Singapore Management University researching on Urban Vulnerability to Climate Change, Urban Heat Island Science, Impacts, and Mitigation, Sustainability in Urban Climatology and Perceptions of Environmental and Climate Change in Tourism. He is a Principal Investigator for the Cooling Singapore initiative , and was recently selected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be a Lead Author for their Cities chapter in the Sixth Assessment Report on Climate Change due in 2021. He enjoys talking and writing about these research issues, and he tweets sporadically on many topics (unrelated to climate change) at @winstontlchow
PANELLIST
Michael Leong
Director
SAA Architects
As a Director at SAA, Michael leads project teams in design and project management. Since starting practice in 2000, he has been involved in a wide spectrum of projects ranging from integrated developments, master plans, transportation projects, commercial, healthcare and high rise residential and institutional developments. Adept in dealing with the complexities of fusing multiple programmatic functions within a single development, Michael has successfully led teams in creating numerous mixed-use developments. This is also exemplified in his most recent project - Woodlands Health Campus (WHC), Singapore’s biggest healthcare facility that enables person-centred care through an integration approach that goes beyond models of care to include nature, community and environmental sustainability.