WHIZDOM 101

Project Details

Project Description

Smart cities don’t have to start from scratch—they can be built within metropolitan cities right now.

Take WHIZDOM 101 in Bangkok as a prime example. Its mission is to transform an urban, 17-acre plot into a smart city model with a fully integrated, digital, mixed-use development with both commercial space and residential towers. By minimizing environmental impacts, saving energy, and reducing carbon emissions, the $1 billion project with a gross floor area of 3,842,716 square feet is designed not only to improve quality of life but also boost sustainable development for the community.

The project itself features forward-thinking applications for sustainability. This includes its accessibility to the public train station; outdoor and the world’s first indoor bike paths; solar use; and an innovative pathway that generates power from footsteps and then used to light the walkways at night. From the very beginning, WHIZDOM 101 was designed with sustainability goals in mind: reduce energy consumption by 32 percent, water usage by 40 percent, and CO2 emissions by 15,000 tons per year. In order to make this happen, Magnolia Quality Development Corporation Limited (MQDC) is relying on BIM software developed by Autodesk such as Revit.

MQDC placed an emphasis on “sustainovation” and finding new ways to create opportunities and applications for sustainability. The firm created their own standards and framework from design all the way through construction to meet the requirements for certification by LEED GOLD and TREES Gold and Platinum (Thai’s Rating of Energy and Environmental Sustainability). They put a great deal of focus on green space areas; designing high-performance buildings and high-efficient MEP systems; maximizing natural ventilation and daylight; selecting non-toxic and low VOC materials; and providing an uplifting and creative atmosphere.

Computer fluid dynamics software by Autodesk was used in the early stage of design to analyze storm water runoff as well as outdoor natural ventilation and indoor air quality through the façade design ventilation. With the BIM model, MQDC analyzed the design and energy consumption in order to change the project’s orientation, building mass, or building envelope as necessary to meet their sustainable goals. The team is also improving collaboration between architectural, MEP, and structural for visualization, interference checking, and crash detections, reducing construction waste and cost by 10 percent.

WHIZDOM 101 has already won international recognition for using high-tech design tools to cut energy use, including a podium finish in the Sustainability category of the 2017 AEC Excellence Awards – the first Southeast Asian project to win one of these prestigious accolades.