Category Archives: Architecture
Why use bricks and cement when you can live in a house made of bamboo! That’s probably what the guys at the Tonji University Shanghai thought too, while sketching out and coming up with this house. And yes, it wouldn’t look out-of-place in a jungle too! Well, Tarzan sure would love this one, and so did we. The Bambu House at the European Solar Decathlon isn’t just made out of green stuff, it works using green energy too. The house is juiced up by energy from the sun, with its sloping roofs integrating solar panels, large enough to generate 9kW powering its bedroom and living room.
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The PricewaterhouseCoopers More London building, also known as the “most sustainable building in London” is all set to go a deeper green. The structure located near Tower Bridge will use biodiesel powered ‘tri-generators’ that will generate around 25% of the buildings power to fulfill a quarter of its energy needs. This sure is a lot, taken that the building houses around 48,000m2 office, a good part of whose electricity, heating and cooling requirements will be fulfilled with green energy.
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We’ve heard of things being recycled and reused, giving them a new life and decreasing the stress on landfills to get rid of them. Well, recycling is now being taken to a whole new level. Here’s an entire theater made from recycling. UK will play host to the Jellyfish Theatre by Berlin-based architects Köbberling and Kaltwasser. The theater will be made from scrapped theater sets, which will be recycled into the building blocks of this entertainment building. Kitchen units are to be donated by the public, while the team heads out for a scavenger hunt for unused stuff in construction sites.
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At first, this one sure seems to resemble a giant maggot asleep on a building top. It’s much more than a colossal worm though. These are farming pods, an answer to roof-top farming, by artist and scientist Natalie Jeremijenko. The farming pods work out well on high-rises, where growing crops a few hundred feet of the ground seems silly. These pods absorb sunlight through their plastic skin covering and recycle air and water from the host building. They function as incubators for plants with hydroponic and soil free trays.
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Every building we construct and build in the future needs to be topped with solar panels and connected to a renewable energy grid, to decrease our dependence on the exploited resources we’ve been using since time immortal. Carl Burdick, an LA-based junior architect, artist and an industrial designer thought the same, designing a regional bus and high-speed rail transit station with a greener touch. The Intermodal Transit Hub uses renewable energy to power up, with photovoltaic cells on the roof, making it a self-sustained structure.
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Imagine giant flower petals in the middle of your metropolitan city, with people living in it! Now this does remind of little forest fairies living in flowers and their stems. We aren’t talking about forest fairies though. We’re talking about real people, living in buildings like these! Future housing could gain inspiration from the Enoki Rome Ecocity. With all the developments in energy conservation, aerodynamics, environmental solutions and material science, this sure seems to be a possibility some time in future.
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Living green seems to be on everyone’s mind today. And the best way to do so is have our homes as green as possible. That’s exactly what designer by John Christophers of Associated Architects thought about while dreaming up this little home in Birmingham’s inner city area. The family home is an architectural marvel from the environment-friendly perspective. And it has rightly won the RIBA award for architectural excellence this year too. So what makes this home so special? Read on! The new house is basically built around an early Victorian two-bedroom semi-detached house, whose early owners would probably have their jaws dropped looking at this one.
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A building with net zero sustainability is as rare as a shooting star. We don’t usually see many of these around. Buildings do adopt green ideas and designs, but a net zero sustainability is not easily achievable. Well, the newest building of its type is a conference center at Bayer’s Pittsburgh campus. The building is equipped with a wall of green perennials, floor to ceiling windows, repurposed slate and wood and Polycarbonates, Polyurethanes and coatings by Bayer MaterialScience.Producing a zero carbon footprint, the building also sends back ecxtra energy to the grid. It also monitors its own energy generating activity.
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Our environment is deteriorating at an alarming rate, and the only way out to save it from ultimate doom and annihilation is a change in our lifestyles. People are slowly realizing the need to save our environment and are coming up with new ways to protect it and nourish it for a greener tomorrow. One such effort is the design for the Urban Formation by Wendy W Fok, Jasmin Dieterle, Jenny Chow, Sue Biolsi and Vasilis Raptis. This project will change the way the corner of 104the Avenue and 152nd street in Surrey, Vancouver, Canada looks, feels and operates.
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Weather change has never been more artistic and eye-catching before. Maybe you stop, look around and run for cover at times when the rains show up all of a sudden. No-one gives a damn about winter winds and the lovely spring breeze in a busy bustling city. Well, the World Financial Center Plaza will have an artistic way to weather change, with a kinetic outdoor sculpture that will light up through December the 31st. Known as the Weather Beacon, this multi-media sculpture by Erik Guzman translates weather data into moving gears and flashing lights. So how does weather data enable the moving of gears and flashing of lights? By receiving them via radio waves! These are then transformed into visual representations of spring breezes, winter winds. The Weather Beacon flashes and has its gears moving about through the day and into the night.
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