Green Building Index Malaysia -Qualitative Survey on Vernacular Housing Type in Malaysia

Green Building Index Malaysia is a profession driven initiative to lead the property industry
of Malaysia towards becoming more environmental friendly. To do this, they have introduced
Green Building Index (M) Assessment Criteria for Residential New Construction for new
residential construction to be built to be more environmental friendly. Vernacular architecture
is a term used to categorize methods of construction which use locally available resources
and traditions to address local needs. 4 building types, one including modern terrace house,
while the others are vernacular architecture, are chosen so that it can be assessed by GBI (M)
Assessment Criteria and scored accordingly to find out which one scores the highest. The
feasibility of the assessment tools are also taken into consideration as this project is assessing
existing buildings and not new construction. Some modifications are done to the assessment
tools to make it more suitable to the project. The results firom the project show that vernacular
buildings scores much higher than the modern terrace house. This shows that vernacular
residential buildings are much more environmental friendly than modernterrace house.