Total Building Performance mandate
Can a tropical hospital stay comfortable without over-cooling?
Strong: comfort was solved by form first and plant second, which is the harder and more durable route.
Slender, north–south oriented blocks with deep horizontal shading reduce solar gain before mechanical cooling is sized.
Naturally ventilated and fan-assisted ward typologies for suitable wards, with mechanical cooling reserved for clinical areas that need it.
High-efficiency chilled-water plant with variable-speed distribution and heat recovery.
Computational design support used for this mandate
Concept → design development
Tested massing, window-to-wall ratio, shading depth and plant efficiency against the Green Mark Platinum target.
Justified passive measures on life-cycle grounds so they survived value engineering.
Design development
Ward cross-ventilation, atrium stack effect, and pressure/containment behaviour around isolation zones.
Supported naturally ventilated ward typologies where clinically acceptable.
Deep shading and slender blocks cut cooling load, but they also constrain floor-plate efficiency and lengthen the campus. Comfort here was bought with plan geometry rather than with plant capacity — the harder route, and the one that survives operational drift.