Tall buildings: Measures of green and sustainable!

Hong Kong people live, work and spend leisure time in tall buildings. Nowadays 'green and sustainable' buildings are commonplace in the vocabulary and literature, although clear concepts tend to be absent. So-called building environmental assessment methods (BEAMs) provide some measure of the greenness of a building, but it remains to be clarified what measure of greenness is provided by an eco-label such as for example BREEAM-Excellent or HK-BEAM-Gold. Some BEAMs now includes aspects of building performance that go beyond environmental aspects to include assessment of social and economic issues, raising the question as to how a labelling system can provide a measure of sustainability. Based on an examination of several tools, this paper examines the extent to which a given BEAM assessment grade provides a measure of the 'greenness' and 'sustainability' of a building.