Advancing Greener Tomorrow Competition
The “Advancing Greener Tomorrow Competition”, organized by KONE Elevator (HK) Limited, aims to encourage students to develop innovative ideas to convert the existing building into a greener structure come in form of efficient use of energy or consideration of environmental sustainability in the design. The theme of the competition was Advancing Greener Tomorrow – preventing waste through reduction, recycling and reuse and achieving sustainability of the environment.
Students were required to submit a written proposal and multimedia work. Qualified entries were uploaded to KONE Elevator (HK) YouTube channel and proceeded to Public Voting. The most popular entry was selected and won the Most Popular Green Solution Award; while the Champion and Merit entries were selected by the judging panel, comprised of senior management members of KONE Elevator (HK) Limited.
Advancing Greener Tomorrow Competition – KONE Hong Kong
Mr. LAU Pak Hei, BBA(Law)&LLB, Year 3
“The competition was a valuable opportunity for me to combine transdisciplinary knowledge in an area I barely knew anything about. The competition requires participants to choose 1 type of building (commercial, institutional, educational…) and design a sustainable solution for it. I decided to do a case study on one of the previous clients of KONE, Swire Properties and their commercial buildings in Quarry Bay.
During the preparation phase, I had to conduct research on various areas, such as Engineering for the design of the HVAC and Movement Systems, Architecture for the facade design, Urban Design for the interaction between occupants and the building and the community, and Law for industry best practices and regulations. In the end, I was able to create a solution that pushes the boundaries of energy conservation and efficiency, create a circular economy that helps the building achieve net zero and even net positive throughout the building lifecycle, and stimulate the review of current regulations and codes of practices for the progress to a greener tomorrow.
The competition proved to be an excellent journey of challenge and self-exploration for me.”
(by LAU Pak Hei)