In late March, BREEAM hosted the first ever online BREEAM Awards ceremony. The three-day virtual event celebrated this year’s shortlisted and winning projects with over 400 attendees joining online from all over the world.
BREEAM has been the world-leading sustainability assessment method for planning projects, infrastructure, and buildings for over 30 years. The BREEAM Awards is an annual celebration recognizing the projects and organizations that, in the view of the independent judging panel, are leading the way with significant achievements in sustainable building design, development and management.
The three-day ceremony, which was hosted by BRE’s Head of Building Performance Services Shamir Ghumra, included keynote speakers Sadie Morgan of dRMM Architects, David Willock of Llyods Bank and Ufi Ibrahim of Energy and Environment Alliance. The keynote speakers addressed the links between sustainability and quality of life, financing sustainability in the built environment and the role of sustainability in environmental and governance practice.
According to Hospitality Insights, “The big hospitality winner of the event was ‘Studio City Phase 2’ in China, a Melco Resorts and Entertainment project, which won the Asia Category, achieving an ‘Excellent’ BREEAM rating. This stunning hotel project was praised for offering guests excellent levels of thermal comfort, lighting, and acoustic performance at significantly reduced operating costs. Not only contributing to local jobs, but the hotel was also consciously designed to avoid disruption to bird migration flight paths. This impressive hotel improves its thermal properties with a curtain walling system and an innovative heat recovery system that captures heat from the cooling tower condensers and reuses it in the hot water system.”
Ufi Ibrahim, Chief Executive of the Energy & Environment Alliance, said: “We are on a steep learning curve. That is why we have partnered with BREEAM, to create the global standard and guidelines for hotels to achieve and even exceed environmental and social targets. And that is why the BREEAM awards are so important. They assign objective and independent approval and recognition of meaningful programs, from which we can draw valuable lessons. They are a snapshot of the innovation we can attain in the here and now, as we aim to create and deliver new solutions for the future.”
