UCTS buildings designed to keep out heat, save energy

Impressive: Aerial view of University College of Technology Sarawak.

GOING into University College of Technology Sarawak (UCTS), one might wonder why the five front buildings were built in such a way that they are slanting forward.

According to its vice chancellor, Prof Datuk Dr Abdul Hakim Juri, the buildings were designed and built purposely in such manner so as to prevent the scotching afternoon heat from going in.

“It is one of the characteristics of our green building design. The buildings are aligned and slanting from East to West so that we can prevent heat from coming in. This way, the buildings will stay cooler inside and if air-condition units are to be used, we do not need to set them to high running capacity,” he said.

At the end of the day, it is a great saving in energy consumption for the university.

The futuristically-designed campus and state-of-the-art facilities of the university, which incorporate planning, design and green architecture simultaneously and effectively, have resulted in a fully integrated, comfortable, user-friendly and conducive teaching and learning environment for students and lecturers.

Due to its environmentally-friendly buildings and couple with its effort to conserve energy, the university has been become the first in the world to be platinum-rated for the Green Buiding Index (GBI) award.

“The minimum mark to qualify for the award is 86. We managed to score 87 marks. We are still waiting from GBI Accreditation Panel (GBIAP) to announce when the ceremony to present the award to us will be held,” he said.

The GBI rating system is regulated by GBIAP, an independent committee consisting of PAM (Malaysia Architect Organisation) and Association of Consulting Engineers Malaysian (ACEM) professionals.

Abdul Hakim said overall their buildings were also greener as they used “environmentally-friendy building materials”.

The glass in every building is double-glazed which helps in preventing heat from going into the building. Such glass is widely used in Europe but for a reversal role which is to prevent heat from going out during winter.

He said in the construction of the campus, they had also incorporated green technology into the buildings as it was not sufficient just to have an environmentally-friendly design and building material to preserve energy and the environment.

“We are now using 50% less energy than any normal building as our buildings have double-grazing glass to conserve energy. Our buildings are also fitted with Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) to reduce energy consumption. With motion sensors, lights would automatically switch on and off when a person walks under it,” he said.

The university is also harvesting rain water and storing it in the pond in front of the university. The water collected will be recycled for air conditioning and flushing of toilets.

Further to that the water from the toilets will again be recycled for gardening use.

UCTS was built on a 95-acre site after the groud-breaking ceremony on Sept 16, 2012.

It currently has a total of 685 students and when the campus is fully completed in the next two to three years’ time, it could accommodate up to 5,000 students at a time.