Category Archives: Architecture
We haven’t seen the last of eco-city designs. Dubai’s Xeritown and Abu Dhabi’s Masdar city have yet another green and clean civilization design to look out for, the Al Jadida Agropolis, a self sufficient city that could show up amongst the sands of Egypt. The Nile delta is seeing a population burst in recent times, with places like Cairo and Alexandria having a population growth. The population there though is completely unsustainable. Overstretched infrastructures, satellite developments and the likes have decreased the quality of life in those areas. So, the Agropolis could be a life saving answer.
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China presents the world with the most sustainable building, a flower. The Wuhan Energy Flower, designed by Dutch company Grontmij in collaboration with Soeters Van Eldonk architects is the first in the world to receive a Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) outstanding accreditation, which isn’t really an easy achievement. Inspired by the Calla Lily flower, this building will play host to the energy center of Wuhan, with zero carbon emissions and zero energy ambitions, with the main office building standing 140 meters tall and surrounded by laboratories in the form of leaves.
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Look around the Big Apple and you’ll see incomplete woodwork of what would be a full-scale building, thanks to the recession. Well, there’s something that could cover up the mess, and give the city its beauty back. Woods Bagot, the architecture mega-firm has come up with an inflatable solution that could get rid of these open incomplete spaces. Developers waiting for money to pour back into their respective projects could now use temporary inflatable buildings in the mean time. These unused sites remain incomplete because of developers running out of finances, with taxes as much as $2 million a year. So, temporary structures enable the site developers to collect rent, and puff up in the form of steel structure wrapped in high-tech plastic fabric called EFTE with air beams stitched into it.
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Cities around the world are growing, vertically, horizontally and are being subjected to increasing populations as time passes by. This quickly developing urban jungle though is a knife in the throat of our environment, causing adverse effects on the environment. Well, the way we live in future could change, if cities adopt Woods Bagot’s and Buro Happold’s Zero Emissions Design (Zero-E) sustainable development design. With Zero-E, developments in future could soon go zero carbon and emission free.
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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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