28 January 2022 02:39 am Views - 380
The CTBUH Sri Lanka conference on ‘Future Cities: Addressing Carbon, Climate and societal Crises’ was held recently at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall.
It was able to yet again successfully gather many prominent tall building professionals in Sri Lanka in the form of structural engineers, building services engineers, architects, academics, researchers, developers, builders, specialist material suppliers and also some young prospective future tall building leaders in the form of postgraduate and undergraduate students from leading universities in Sri Lanka.
The audience included well over 60 participants, who joined physically and over 100 participants, who joined virtually. The conference was initiated with a welcome address by Eng. Shiromal Fernando, the country representative of CTBUH, where he focused the audience’s attention to the topic of the evening, the Future City.
In addition to this, he highlighted on the immerging skyline of Sri Lanka and the port city development that can transform the conventional monocentric city to polycentric cities. Further, he started off the workshop by giving an insightful introduction to green integrated cities and the need for greener construction for a sustainable future.
The first keynote speaker of the conference was chief guest Prof. Ranjith Dissanayake on ‘Future Plans for Sustainable Cities in Si Lanka’. During his keynote speech, he discussed on the visible transformation at various parts of the country and how the green initiative can transform society to work as one and create a country we love to live in.
He also educated the audience on the national projects that are initiated to planting of trees, road safety improvements and river conservation. The professionals of the industry were joined as keynote speakers for the event, who joined physically and virtually. They were Arct. Dan Amarasekere, Prof. Wije Ariyarathna, Prof. Sarath Kotagama, Prof. Priyan Dias, Prof. Priyan Mendis and Yamuna Jayaratne.
This was followed by the panel discussion carried out by Arct. Niroda Gunadasa, Eng. Dilina Hettiarachchi, Eng Udayanga Alwis, Eng. Tharindu Samarasinghe and Arct. Thilini Liyanage on the topic of ‘New Urban Form For The New Normal’, where the discussion was on the changes occurred due to the pandemic.
During the panel discussion, questions by the audience members present physically and virtually were addressed by the panel members. Tokens of appreciation were handed over to the keynote speakers by Shiromal Fernando and the panellists received tokens of appreciation by Ruwan De Silva.
The participants physically present were then invited to the port city visit in the arranged transportation and the virtual participants obtained the live stream of the visit. Jayaratne provided the introduction of the port city at the gallery.