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Judging by it’s scale, it’s hard to believe that China International Windoor City is a family company. Based in Gaobeidian, the organisation includes the largest window, door and curtain wall exhibition in Asia. Windoor City has a total construction area covering 50 hectares, with a focus on energy saving products. Windoor City facilities produce everything from windows and doors, to wall systems and ventilation systems.
International attention on Gaobeidian is set to increase up to October 2019 when Windoor City along with Passive House Institute China will host the 23rd International Passive House Conference.
Can High Quality Building Products be Made in China?
Windoor City, and China in general have a marketing challenge to overcome. We (in the West) are skeptical of ‘made in China’.
We associate ‘German made‘ or ‘European‘ with quality. And we associate ‘made in China‘, with cheap. But how fair or accurate is this association? We’ve grown very accustomed to ‘Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China‘ and we don’t expect our iPhones to fall to pieces.
I’m not sure at this stage, how production of high quality Passive House Certified building products in China will go. But if China can reliably mass-produce these products at a reasonable price, this will be a game changer for the Asia Pacific construction market.
Windoor Quality Control
Peter explained that quality control is part of the production process at Windoor City. Their facility includes a test lab where different and extreme climatic conditions can be set on either side of completed windows or curtain walls. Windoor City also regularly test building components for typhoon strength winds.
I asked Peter about the standards they use to test windows and building products against in China. While he didn’t go into any detail, he assured me that some of the Chinese standards are very high. Lack of detail here might be reason for skepticism, but let’s not kid ourselves about the quality of our own windows and doors. The majority of what we currently produce in New Zealand and Australia are far from world leading.
Government Certification at Scale
I don’t know much about the certification process for buildings in China. Peter says that third party certification and government checks on installed products is normal. I’d like to learn more about this process and there’s anything we should either learn from or be weary of. Regulation and bureaucracy certainly can’t be blamed for slowing down construction in China.
It’s hard to find exact numbers, but the anecdotes I’ve heard regarding the speed of development in some Chinese cities are eye-watering. Even if half true, the rate of Chinese house manufacturing could solve the New Zealand housing shortage in a matter or months, possibly weeks!
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A Passive House Factory Producing Passive House Windows
There was a large Chinese contingent at the 22nd International Passive House Conference in Munich in 2018. Rumours grew during the course of that event and those rumours were eventually confirmed in the closing address from Wolfgang Feist. Dr Feist announced in March 2018 that International Passive House Conference would, for the first time, be hosted outside Europe in 2019.
China is hitting the ground running with Passive House. During the 2018 conference, there was a whole stream of sessions highlighting Asian and Chinese Passive House projects. One of these session I attended happened to be about the process of building a Passive House factory for the purpose of producing Passive House certified windows. The factory in that story was none other than a Windoor City building. I recall the presenting Austrian Passive House Consultant being extremely complimentary (if not surprised) by the quality of workmanship demonstrated by the Chinese builders on site.
We should not be too quick to judge the quality of buildings, or the products made in those buildings, before we’ve had a chance to see them for ourselves. I’m looking forward to seeing what Passive House factories in China can produce.
Learning from the World
I questioned Peter about our perception that Chinese companies often make copies of products from elsewhere in the world. He said that it makes sense to learn from the best, and I believe this is true. Of course counterfeiting is not ok. Years of design refinement and intellectual property has gone into the development of some of the best building products available on the market.
This is where the Passive House Institute can play a key role. Designers, builders, officials and consumers around the world, don’t take Passive House Certification lightly. Product Certification provides consumers with confidence that the product will be of the highest quality, regardless of where it’s made.
“We can not just fight alone. We should fight together for the market and for the industry,” explains Peter.
But as for copying, I’m not sure what the answer is here. I’m a big advocate for learning from others instead of re-inventing the wheel. But it’s also important that design work respected and dues paid.
23rd International Passive House Conference
Having been very lucky to get to Heidelberg, I’m not sure if I’ll make it to Gaobeidian in October. (It would be great to cover the event through the Home Style Green Podcast if anyone is interested in sponsoring the show to make that happen! Contact me.)
Regardless, the conference is already a game changer by virtue of being the first outside Europe. The 23rd International Passive House Conference and the emergence of big companies like Windoor City in the Asia Pacific region will definitely have an impact on the Australian and New Zealand building industries. I’m quietly confidence this influence will be a positive one.
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