Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/74664
that has been heavily involved with LEED since the program was started. "Many developers are also owner-oper- ators, so sustainability can be used as a driver for smart business decisions that attract investors, tenants and custom- ers. The leaders are getting out ahead and testing ways to make sustainability a revenue generator." That was the case with City Creek Center. City Creek Reserve insisted from the start that whatever plans took shape had to be sustain- able, Loch says. After Taubman was brought in as the retail developer, both parties committed to that dur- ing the approval processes right from the start, he says. The partners suc- cessfully applied for certification un- der LEED's new Neighborhood De- velopment pilot program. City Creek's challenge was simple. "People just weren't coming to down- town Salt Lake City," Loch said. "We The world is getting greener, one center at a time Designing Istanbul's Istinye Park shopping center was no walk along the Bosporus. Upwards of 60 percent of the project, which was to nestle in a natural bowl on the hilly European side of Turkey's largest city, would be up against earth — a challenge for the architects, Develop- ment Design Group, but also an unusual opportunity. "The goal was to make the design energy-efficient," said Ahsin Rasheed, CEO of Baltimore- based DDG, which has de- signed centers in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Eu- rope. "A lot of times we create earth berms or natural insula- ISTANBUL'S ISTINYE PARK PROVIDED A GREEN CHALLENGE TO ITS DEVELOPERS. tion by bringing a building into a shaded area, but this project al- ready had that going for it." So DDG let the site inspire the design. Istinye Park opened in 2007, and the awards quickly followed, including being named one of the best large shopping centers in Europe by ICSC in 2009. The designers succeeded in creating not only a successful and visually stunning mall, but also one that used every available tool to reduce its environmental impact. The world's shopping centers are going "green" at a fast clip, not only in developed markets, but also in emerging regions like Southeast Asia and Africa. They are being designed to generate their own power, use as little water as possible, take advantage of natural heating and cooling, and reuse or recycle materials and trash. Guiding the shift is a burgeoning number of green building councils around the world. As of May, there were active councils in 25 countries, and an additional 43 countries were in the process of creating their own. For the present, though, green building efforts 38 SCT / AUGUST 2012 worldwide are typically done on a voluntary basis and not to sat- isfy a government mandate, says Rasheed. In the fastest-growing markets, including China, Indonesia, Turkey and the Middle East, this is still generally up to the developers, he says. "Developers want to come across as sensitive and aware, and they want to make their projects more competitive and marketable and more intelligent," Rasheed said. "So it is a market-driven need in those societies where it is not mandated. A lot of time we have seen that market-driven initiatives have more power and longevity than government-driven laws." Governments are gradually ratcheting up their efforts to require green building, however. The EU, for instance, has an- nounced new standards starting in 2020 that will require all build- ings to be carbon-neutral. Green building has come a long way from its roots in the 1970s. The term has come to mean many things, including