Category Archives: Architecture
Is it a wheel? Maybe a giant-wheel! Hell no! It’s the Ocean Imagination, the Thematic Pavilion of Yeosu 2012 by Unsangdong Architects, a pavilion beautiful enough to be a wonder of the world. Looking great isn’t everything this one boasts. It’s green too! A viewer gets a closer look at the ocean’s ecosystems with this pavilion with various exhibits that relate to man-made nature. The pavilion also features the Ocean Gate, a type of vertical sea-shore. Also, the Sustainable Ocean void space combines flowing water with the ecological environment, while the structure’s outer space is used for exhibiting the Water-Valley, Media-Valley, Play-Valley, Green-Valley and loads more.
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Now a passerby would probably hit himself on the head and pinch himself to make sure he isn’t dreaming, if he walks past this awesome structure for the first time. At least I would, if we hadn’t checked it out before hand. Anyways, what we’re talking about is a vertical garden is the southeast of Spain. This six-storey high garden has been sprouted up on the façade of a new children’s library building, in the town square of San Vicente del Raspeig. The garden is in itself an architectural wonder; a designed conceived by architect Jose Maria Chofre. The building, owing to the fact that it has a full fledged garden growing on its side walls, contrasts the otherwise concrete surroundings.
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Eco-friendly vehicles of the future will now have something more to make them closer to reality. Out go the days of gasoline guzzling carbon emitting cars that we’ve been using for decades. The world is now rolling out a red carpet for these clean green cars that are receiving technology boosts day by day. Sanyo now has a sparkling new factory that will chisel out lithium-ion batteries for EVs at the Kansai Plant. The plant, spanning an area of 42,831m2 will produce an astounding number of 1 million cells a month in the beginning. To construct this plant, Sanyo spent a whopping 13 Billion yens.
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The stuff we usually come across in a museum usually leaves us jaw dropped, be it rare pieces from history or wax statues. The experience gets better when the museum building itself is as awesome as the exhibits inside. The guys at MAD Architects thought the same probably, while designing this beautiful and stunning museum building for the city of Xiamen, China. At first look, the building does remind one of a bunch of poisonous mushrooms on which you’d probably find a fairy sunbathing. The organic molten metal building will float above the city below on five legs, and will use solar panels on its roof to power up. The warm climate in the city of Xiamen makes the solar panel array on the roof even more applicable and efficient.
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California’s Northern Sonoma Wine Country will now play host to a sparkling new hotel, with a water theme. David Baker + Partners working in collaboration designed the h2hotel which hopes to be rewarded with the LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. A short drive from San Francisco, the h2hotel stands four stories high and has 36 rooms. The building also integrates a living roof on its terrace, which takes up 75% of its top. This helps minimize heat, add a bit of green and works as a home for insects and birds too. The roof is also designed to work as a water collection surface, channeling rainwater and using it to juice up the “Spoonfall” water sculpture, made of a thousand espresso spoons. Part of the h2hotel’s power supply is sourced from solar panels that soak up the sun.
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Hard Rock International will now have something to offer to the Hollywood and Highland Center on July 19, 2010. Hard Rock Cafe Hollywood will soon fling its doors open at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard, the Hollywood & Highland Center, surrounded by the world-famous Kodak Theater, Grauman’s Chinese Theater and Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Well, the Hollywood version of the Hard Rock Café will be a whole lot greener too and will feature a live music area, a bar to drink away to glory and two Rock Shops with limited-edition merchandise. The café spanning 20,000-square-feet was designed to achieve Silver LEED certification, with eco-friendly features like a self-regulating, energy-efficient lighting system and water conserving plumbing fixtures. These will help reduce carbon footprint by 20 metric tons annually.
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The Strata Tower in London is sparkling new and has made a point to take the breath away of people who come across it. Well, besides just looking great, the tower in the city of London is a green building too, incorporating the use of wind energy to power it up. And no, it doesn’t need any of those gigantic wind turbines set around it for its clean energy. The Strata Tower accommodates three in built turbines that grasp the way the wind blows and power up the building. Standing 147 meters high, the building adds a lot of green to the city skyline. The £113.5m Strata is just the first of two more towers like it to follow. The turbines aren’t really noisy at all, and do not cause residents to stuff balls of cotton in their ears. The Strata’s wind turbines manage to generate enough energy to satisfy 8% of the 43-storey building’s energy needs.
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Bond boy, Pierce Brosnan has pooled in his bucks for a green crib. Remembered best for his role playing the super spy James Bond, Brosnan has invested $9 million in building a mansion, to be powered by energy from the sun and featuring a host of other green eco-friendly qualities. The mansion, located on the Malibu beachfront, is equipped with an outdoor pool and guest cabana as well as a heating system, all powered up with juice from the sun. The extra surplus energy will be sent back to the grid. That’s not all. Water recycling will also lend a helping hand into wiping out this homes carbon footprint, with a purpose-built plant to be used. A custom built solar powered $400,000 waste-disposal system will keep the waste in check.
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Taiwanese chip maker TSMC has recently started up on its newest project, a green one that too, with the construction of its third 300mm wafer plant. Now we aren’t talking about those oily potato chips and wafers, we’re going on about those green chips you usually find in gadgets. Located in Taichung’s Central Taiwan Science Park, the new Fab 15 plant will have a capacity of over 100,000 wafers per month. Besides wafers, the plant will also generate jobs, with 8,000 new skilled jobs to crop up once construction is complete and the doors are flung open. TSMC has promised to clean up its act with this new foundry, reducing energy usage and greenhouse gas emission. The company has poured out as much as $10 billion on this one.
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In today’s cities, we have buildings sprouting up everywhere, with people choosing to live in them and work in them. And it obviously is necessary that if not all than at least the majority of these should have some green qualities to flaunt. Well, there are a few buildings in the world that have a lot more green in them, than the others standing around. These buildings find innovative solutions to keep the inhabitants inside with a pleasant weather and keep the sun out when unneeded, without causing too much of a carbon footprint. Companies too have been innovating designs for solar panels on buildings and wind turbines beings developed by AeroVironment. United Technologies is developing cleverer ways to heat up and cool buildings, reusing heat wasted in the process.
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