Leo Hwang, third-generation successor in the Chyau Fwu Group and Executive Director of the Parkview Green (Fangcaodi) Project talks about his family’s commitment to sustainable building
Interview by Jennifer Thomé, photo by Sui

Next summer, Parkview Green will open its doors to Beijing, bringing to fruition nearly twenty years of planning and construction, and raising the bar for the next wave of real estate development in Beijing. Parkview Green, a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) -pre-certified building, combines the latest in high-tech and ecological construction, and the results are breathtaking. 

Tell us a little bit about this building. This building is actually four office towers and a hotel, but what makes them one building is the environmental shield we’ve constructed around them. The shield not only allows us to trap heat in the winter and retain cool in the summer, which leads to a 50 percent savings in energy cost, but it also acts as a rain water collection system.

The central area of the building is a public piazza that can be used for events year round. It’s basically a miniature cityscape, and the bridge will be open to the public year round, both day and night, like an urban public square. When we designed this building, we wanted it to be part of the fabric of the city.

You said you’re saving a lot on energy costs, but you’ve also made a substantial financial commitment. What’s your return on investment looking like? People always ask us: how much more expensive is this building than a normal building? Well, I can answer that. It’s a lot more. [laughs] But we never measure it like that. We never asked ourselves how much it would cost if we removed the environmental features. These features have been around from the beginning. They are inherent to the building and bread into to very fiber of it. Everything here has a function, and the form follows the function. The only arbitrary thing in this building is the angle of the cross struts. Everything else has a purpose.

The funny thing is that, compared to other real estate developers, we’re not very good at spreadsheet development. We don’t run things by the cost or the bottom line. From the very beginning my grandfather has said that we need to place great care into everything we build. He has always looked as building as a privilege and a responsibility, and he believes that we are lucky to be in this position. My grandfather started from nothing, and he realizes that when you’re building, you’re creating places that will last way past your lifetime. That’s why everything he builds is done with the vision that it will be there forever.

Another part of our philosophy comes from my father. He always said that if you don’t build for what you want yourself, you will always second-guess yourself. What we’ve done with this building is that we’ve combined all of the experience from our buildings in Europe and Asia, and put it together here. We would never be able to do this in Europe. It’s too expensive. Just the amount of glass that’s used in this building is absolutely ridiculous, and you wouldn’t be able to do it anywhere else. It would be uncommercial. But in China, these things happen.

“We never asked ourselves how much it would cost if we removed the environmental features. These features have been around from the beginning”

Are you planning on selling this project, or will the Chyau Fwu Group manage it? We don’t develop to sell. Everything that we develop is created with the idea that we will own and operate it as a long-term asset. We believe that when you do this, you don’t do what other developers do, which is build and run. We still own and operate all of our key projects, and when you do that, then you put in the time and effort to build something that will support you in the long-run.

This building is unprecedented in Beijing, and China. How are potential tenants responding to this building? People are responding very positively, and the tenants come in because they love the space. A lot of our corporate tenants are actually raising their own game before moving into the space – they are placing flagships, instead of franchising, and a lot of brands that had previously ruled out China are signing up with us. They think the space is unbelievable, and many are also impressed that we are green. But the thing is, we don’t just want to be seen as a green building. To us, green is a given.

Office tenants have, unfortunately, not been able to sign, because our opening date has not been fixed. The biggest hold-up was the fire certification, which was delayed because we’ve built a brand new type of indoor-outdoor hybrid.

One of the benefits of having the LEED certification is that has helped us secure a lot of commercial tenants who have a global CSR policy that requires them to rent in LEED certified buildings. So in terms of tenants, we’re competing with the top buildings, like Guomao Phase Three, which is actually framed quite nicely by two of our own towers.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the art inside the building? Well, my uncle purchased all of the art here. He believes that a building isn’t alive until you populate with landscaping, art, and people. This is something he cares very deeply about, and all of the art is taken from his own collection. Once this building opens, there will be art everywhere. Dali sculptures will be placed throughout the building, sculptures will surround the building and fill the public spaces.

Then there is the landscaping. This building has a lot of glass, and a lot of steel. It’s very Bladerunner. My uncle wants this building to be like a jungle, and we’re planning on covering the bridges with greenery. The art and the plants will be able to soften the edges of this state of the art building.