Category Archives: Architecture
This February, the city of Vancouver will take pride in hosting the greenest Winter Olympics witnessed till date in British Columbia, Canada. The city has constructed a whole bunch of building structures that show off outstanding LEED certifications and has also unveiled its naturally:wood website to the public . A three level speed skating hall known as the Richmond Olympic Oval with a colossal wood wave roof, the size of four and a half football fields, flaunts its energy saving refrigeration and rainwater collection systems. The roof of this structure single-handedly costs a massive CAD $16-million! The Winter Games Secretariat’s International Media Centre will be hosted at the Vancouver Convention Centre that has a living roof with 6 acres of 400,000 native plants that confines rainwater to be used in the building, on-site sea water treatment system, marine habitats and also a sea water heating and cooling system.
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Vodafone’s new call centre in Stroke-on-Trent, has been designed to make employees more sensitive towards the environment and spread awareness regarding greener architectures. The building is totally made of steel and mineral wool. The building has been very thoughtfully been planned to accommodate more than 900 people and provide easy flexibility for moving around when required. Daylight-controlled lighting is fitted in the main halls to maximise the use of natural daylight and minimize the use of electric lighting and stored rainwater is used to flush the toilets. Now only if more such big wigs adopt such policies, will the people be more conscious about being eco-sensitive.
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Well, Copenhagen Summit is throwing up lot of surprises but the only gloom lifting ones are the new green designs and products that are being unveiled while the debate rages on. Norway for instance has unveiled a complete energy-efficient office building concept and design. It is very high on innovation from very exterior to the interiors. There are operable shutters on the exterior façade which can be operated to adjust window areas according to the need of sunlight, heat during different seasons and inside of the shutters have been fitted with energy efficient LED lights. Since its sea facing, sea water has been optimally used for different water and energy needs. Also building has wind turbines for generating electricity and a green roof with rain water harvesting channels for recycling water.
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Homeless people in the Indian capital of New Delhi can finally breathe a sigh of relief with the introduction of solar powered night shelters that are being set as a refuge for them during the winter season. These shelters will no longer be the cold, damp and dingy places they used to be. As planned, a few of them will be redesigned bamboo houses
that will be fitted with solar panels to generate electricity. Each of these shelters will accommodate 100 people. The government will set up about three to four of these bamboo shelters along with 16 tents. The bamboo covering from the outside will help insulate these shelters from the biting cold and will have bunk beds set up inside to save space. The shelters will have solar panels fitted on the roof that will store energy during the day, to be used at night. This project by the government and designed by Indo-Global Social Service Society (IGSSS) will come as a great aid to the homeless people of New Delhi who spend their nights on streets every winter.
[Times Of India]
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Japanese baseball goes green with The Hanshin Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Hyogo going environment friendly next year. Solar battery panels are being installed on the roof above the stadiums infield stands. The stadium, home to the Hanshin Tigers baseball team will be installed with 1600 solar panels, about 140 centimeters in width and 80 centimeters in length that will generate a massive 193,000 kilowatt hours every year! This energy harvested will be used to power up the stadium. However, the stadium will not have a power storage system to store the energy generated in the day. These solar panels will help decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 133 tons a year and will fulfill 5.3 percent of the stadiums power needs.
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It is indeed saddening to watch the liters and liters of rain water go waste when it rains heavily. Yes, rainwater harvesting and other purposeful schemes have been working, but here is another very interesting way to meaningfully utilize these excessive waters. Dutch company De Urbanisten has designed the ‘Watersquare’ which is like a huge container which will store the rain water during monsoons and will act like a regular ground for regular activities like playing or meeting, when dry. Children will be able to play in and around the water and, in the winter, even skate on the ice. The rainwater collected by the Watersquare will serve as a grey-water system for the surrounding houses. And after the rains, the water will automatically, without hampering the present sewage system, will recede into the nearby rivers and other water bodies. I think a lot of these Watersquares will definitely go a long way in maintain the eco system of our environment.
[WorldArchitectureNews ]
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Intelligently thought out and laid out architectural plans are the new “in” thing these days. Designed by architects at C.F. Moller, the Dragen Children’s House sets new standards as it has been designed especially for the kids. Everything that has gone in the making of this building are Nordic Swan’ eco-labeled, and the final output has been certified passive-house, in other words using a minimum of energy. Firstly, the design allots a lot more space for the kids to move and run around. The ‘Dragon Children’s House’ has small niches uniformly distributed throughout to suit the children’s development for their learning and growing. The highly insulated construction consumes less than 20 percent of the energy used for a standard building. highly insulated construction will consume less than 20 percent of the energy used for a standard building. Everything sounds good, but my question is why just a pedagogical construction, and not all buildings in future?
[WorldArchitectureNews]
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Wooden floors are high on maintenance and need to be replaced occasionally. If you are looking for more viable options, then let Boston-based Company EcoModern Design show you how to make the flooring of your house both classy and sustainable at the same time. Their new product EcoLux flooring comes in gold, silver, copper-leafed, imitation gold leaf, Forest Stewardship Council-certified hardwood, bamboo, or engineered maple. This flooring is made with metal gilding using a 2,000-year-old technique which was originally used to restore paintings.
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Dallas is going green in a total planned way. Recently a competition was held to redesign a rundown block in downtown Dallas and among all the architects, designers who submitted their plans, Forwarding Dallas, a Portuguese based architectural firm was picked as a winner. Their design is high both on eco-sustainability and aesthetics. The residential blocks have a typical hill-side structure which will be used to grow plants and it incorporates renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines to supply power. There are plans in place for rain-water harvesting as well. So this community housing will be sustainable and green all the way.
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As an initiative to deal with drastic climatic changes, the Taipei European School’s (TES) Swire European Primary Campus inaugurated its first solar powered roof above the play ground on November 17th, 2009. Owing to its shape, the roof consisting of disc-like photovoltaic (PV) modules has been aptly named as the “PV Frisbee”. Twenty one such roofs have also been installed across various schools in other Asian locations as well as in Europe, Africa, South America and Australia. Coordinated and designed by Abakus Solar AG a technology company was founded in Germany but has been operating in Taiwan since 2006, the project has been co-financed by the German Energy Agency and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi). Powered by mainly Germany-based organizations, this solar roof project forms a part of the “Solar Roofs Program for Foreign Market Development” initiative of the German government.
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