The pilots of a 16-month round-the-world journey in a plane powered only by sunlight stopped for a break at the luxury Peninsula Shanghai hotel recently.
The Solar Impulse project has been undertaken by Swiss explorers Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg to demonstrate the potential of clean technology.
After a 20-hour flight from Myanmar to China, contending with strong winds, plummeting temperatures and the mountainous provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, the pair rested up before the next leg of their journey at the iconic Shanghai venue.
The Peninsula Shanghai was chosen thanks to its on-going commitment to supporting environmentally friendly projects, such as its introduction of complimentary charging stations for BMW electric and hybrid cars in the hotel car park.
Flowcrete Asia recently worked with the hotel within this car park to provide sustainable flooring solutions for a refurbishment project. 700m2 of the Singapore Green Label certified Deckshield ID system was supplied to revitalise the VIP parking area’s floor finish. The longevity and low VOC content of Deckshield ID makes it an environmentally friendly deck coating option that helps developments to achieve green building accreditations such as LEED.
The Solar Impulse pilots themselves were snapped on a Deckshield surface, as the Peninsula Shanghai’s helipad was also recently recoated with a colourful, high performance Deckshield ID finish.
So (while they may not have known it), even when standing at the top of the hotel, looking out over the wide sweeping vista of the Shanghai skyline, the pilots were still being supported by sustainable technology!
The helipad had recently been refurbished because the hotel was playing host to Russia’s diplomatic representatives to the Shanghai APEC 2014 meeting and it wanted to ensure that the first impression that VIP visitors arriving by helicopter would have of the site would be a clean, unblemished and vibrantly coloured platform.
The Solar Impulse is currently in Nagoya, Japan, waiting for favourable weather conditions to continue on to Hawaii. You can follow the plane’s progress here.
