TAIPEI 101 Tower

This design ideology helped TAIPEI 101 to decrease potable water usage by at least 30% compared to average building consumption, saving about 28,000,000 liters of potable water annually.

With 101 floors and over 2 million square feet, TAIPEI 101 is one of the tallest buildings in the world. Since its completion in 2004, it has become an icon for Taipei City, Taiwan and has set the quality and performance benchmark for supertall buildings in Asia. Although TAIPEI 101 was designed before the release of LEED and Taiwan’s own green building rating system (EEWH), the project team’s dedication to quality influenced them to incorporate green features into the design. TFCC chose the globally recognized LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance certification with the goal of motivating people to think about the interactions between individuals, buildings and the environment.

From 2008 to 2010, TAIPEI 101 invested in significant energy efficiency retrofit projects to generate energy and water savings. A review of public lighting was undertaken and resulted in the conversion to more energy efficient luminaires and lighting controls. By utilizing Energy Management and Control Systems (EMCS), building managers are able to adjust operating temperatures, modify chiller plant operating schedules and modify chilled water distribution according to actual tenant needs. These combined efforts have helped to rank TAIPEI 101 in the top 30% of high-rise office buildings as benchmarked by the U.S. ENERGY STAR database, to reduce energy consumption by 33.41 million kWh per year and to save more than US$2 million per year.

The introduction of low-flow water fixtures together with dedicated water management systems effectively reduced water usage without jeopardizing tenant satisfaction. This design ideology helped TAIPEI 101 to decrease potable water usage by at least 30% compared to average building consumption, saving about 28,000,000 liters of potable water annually.

Low-mercury and no-mercury lamp fixtures were installed throughout the building to reduce exposure levels and potentially toxic pollution. The current baseline permits a maximum of 90 pictograms of mercury per lumen-hour, but TAIPEI 101’s engineering team so far excelled in their design that they were able to reduce mercury levels to as low as 58.5 picograms in sourced lamps.

Because of the limited space for landscaping on site, the team felt it was important to implement sustainable landscaping practices in the city in order to achieve the overall sustainability goal of the project. As part of its building management initiatives, it adopted part of the Zhong Qiang Park to restore and protect habitats that allow native flora and fauna to flourish.