sustainable architecture

Pittsburgh-based Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, has opened the Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL), said to be one of the world’s greenest buildings.

Completed in late 2012, the new 24,350-­square-­foot structure is the first building project to pursue all three of the highest green architecture and landscape standards: the Living Building Challenge SM, LEED® Platinum and Sustainable Sites Initiative™ (SITES™) certification. A model of sustainability for architects, scientists, planners and anyone interested in living greener, this new building was designed to mimic nature and function as elegantly and efficiently as a flower...

The Start.Home is the Stanford University entry in the 2013 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon.

Integrating technology into a home that can grow as needs change, the Start.Home design allows for customization and additions that are based on a pre-engineered, pre-fabricated start.core that can meet net-zero energy efficiency standards.

The Stanford design team aims to provide “efficiency without sacrificing creativity” such that each house can be an expression of its owner. The 12’x15’x10’ start.core features natural lighting, open spaces, a high roof that permits passive ventilation, and an emphasis on connecting the interior to the outdoors. The basic unit provides for a bathroom, kitchen, mechanical component access, and living areas. The start.core can be shipped on a standard truck trailer and installed on a lot for construction and customization.

Learn more and view images at the original article...

Architect Stephane Malka’s striking facade proposal for a Parisian restaurant creates an unusual site, sure to stand out in the urban setting of the city. Amidst a city of man-made concrete and glass structures could rise a building essentially comprised of an organically growing “forest.

Malka, who has experience in urban landscaping, created a green facade that wraps around a glass enclosure and is composed of raw wooden blocks arranged in a patchy, pixelating pattern. The uneven surface creates spaces for plant life to grow, spilling flourishing green plants and foliage down the building.

The textured wooden facade, which seems to actively move inward to completely engulf the glass skin, stops to reveal an expansive view of the restaurant’s interior.

Malka’s work presents passersby and restaurant customer with with the interesting paradox of nature abundantly flourishing in an urban environment...

At a construction cost of $130 million, Newport Beach City Hall and Civic Center is a significant project for Orange County, not only in terms of size and scope, but also with regard to aesthetics and sustainability.

The contemporary steel and glass design has a very distinct appearance, reflecting a sense of movement through the repeated use of curved structural members that create rhythm and add scale.

Louvers at the ceiling and wall planes reguate daylight and add visual continuity throughout the entire project, linking the new city hall to the renovated library and creating a public gathering area for the community.

Set to achieve LEED gold certification, the design features clerestory windows that maximize daylighting while deep overhangs allow for passive cooling. Operable windows allow occupants to take advantage of the mild coastal climate while enjoying views to the park outside, which adds 12 acres of trails, wetlands and recreation space to the city's parklands.

This house by Robert M. Gurney Architect, consists of three volumes linked together with glass bridges. The western volume contains a garage and service space, while the eastern volume, floating above grade, contains the primary living spaces. The house unfolds into a 124 ft long living volume, light-filled and wrapped in glass with panoramic views of the river. A grid of steel columns modulates the space.

Covered terraces extend the interior spaces, providing an abundance of outdoor living space with varying exposures and views. Along with a geothermal mechanical system, solar tubes, hydronic floor heating and a concrete floor slab to provide thermal mass, large overhangs above the terraces prevent heat gain and minimize dependence on fossil fuel. The entire house is elevated above grade to protect against anticipated future flooding...

The New Orleans Bioinnovation Center is a prototype for nimble sustainability, located at a brownfield site in the burgeoning biotechnology district across from Tulane University Medical School on historic Canal Street.

When New Orleans began to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, NOBIC was back on track, helped by the state, which—like other states—had discovered the economic potential of attracting biotechnology incubators. The goal was to create a collaborative environment in which fledgling start-ups could grow into successful enterprises and spread the wealth.

The glass and steel structure New Orleans Bioinnovation Center strikes a lucid and gracious balance between hard-core sustainability, tenant harmony, and economic viability. Smith believes EDR's success is a result of creating "people ecosystems" by designing for "a long life and a loose fit."

Dublin Airport’s 75.000 m² Terminal's 2 is a visually striking building that makes maximum use of natural daylight, creating bright and airy spaces that are formed through consideration of passenger movement to enable clear and logical sequential journeys. The fluid forms of the building have been achieved via the use of ALUCOBOND® aluminium composite panels.

Respect for the local environment was a key criteria in the selection of materials for the project, not only to respond to its location and context, but also to ensure the best possible quality and value. The building sets new standards in sustainable terminal design, achieving a 17 percent reduction in CO2 emissions when compared to statutory compliant design.

From the very start it was clear that the landscape around the villa should be preserved as much as possible. Semi-positioned in the slope of the hill, the first floor towers above the partially glazed ground floor and the undulating dune landscape. The large glass facades ensure a connection between outdoors and indoors; contact with nature is tangible throughout the house. At the same time, the patio in the heart of the villa provides maximum daylight in all the rooms.

Special attention is devoted to energy in Villa V, with geothermal energy storage, a heat pump and solar collectors on the green roof and only natural materials have been used in the building construction processes...

A COTE Top Ten Green Project outperforms expectations and earns more recognition.

Like its surrounding SoMa (South of Market) neighborhood in San Francisco, 355 11th Street is an eye-catching hybrid of old and new. And in the three years since this formerly derelict but National Register–listed plumbing warehouse was renovated into a LEED-NC Gold–certified mixed-use office building and LEED-CI Platinum–certified restaurant, it has become a community magnet.

These attributes, among many others, garnered the project an AIA COTE Top Ten Green Project designation in 2010 and, this year, the inaugural 2013 AIA COTE Plus award.

Beijing-based Decode Urbanism Office has designed a tower with a façade composed of multiple wind-driven generators.

Thousands of wind turbines will produce enough energy to power the entire building. At night, the diamond-shaped generators are lit with thousands of LED lights incorporated into the building envelope.

The 350-meter (1,150-foot) structure, in Taichung City, China, will house the city’s Department of Urban Development, as well as commercial activities.

The tower’s façade, inspired by the plum blossom — China and Taiwan's  national flower – reacts to changes in direction and intensity of the wind, creating a truly dynamic visual effect. Similarly, mechanical wind power generators have LEDs, illuminating the façade and producing a pulsating flow of light, whose intensity and color adjust to correspond to changes in temperature and season.

The wind harnessing capability, along with the lighting that responds to local atmospheric conditions, makes this conceptual tower a true “decoder of nature.”

Centerbrook Architects and Planners developed Hotchkiss Biomass Power Plant, a 16,500-square-foot structure that impresses due to its ingenious architecture and environmentally-friendly features.

The plant burns sustainably harvested wood-chips to heat 85 buildings that total 1.2 million square feet: “Designated a carbon neutral fuel by the International Panel on Climate Change, the locally sourced wood chips are the byproduct of sustainably managed forests; they replace some 150,000 gallons of imported fuel oil per year, cutting emissions overall, most dramatically sulfur dioxide by more than 90 percent“. Waste ash is collected for use as fertilizer for the neighboring vegetable gardens...

For HSB Stockholm’s architectural competition 2023, three teams of architects have produced innovative proposals for private residences of the future at three different locations in the centre of Stockholm.

Berg | C.F. Møller‘s proposed design is a 34-storey skyscraper made of wood.

The architects are working in partnership with Dinell Johansson and consultants Tyréns on their entry. The team has chosen to build upwards, and has designed a 34-storey residential building, which will be seen for miles.

The building will be built over a wooden construction with a concrete core, and it is intended to give the people of Stockholm a new and characteristic beacon and meeting place in their city.

The Bow is Canada’s largest tower outside of the city of Toronto, rising to 777 feet on Calgary’s east side.

Foster + Partners’ soaring new addition to the Calgary skyline just opened, making it the city's tallest tower. The Bow is a new mixed-use building surrounded by lush landscaping. The sleek skyscraper features three six-story sky gardens, which help to naturally cool and filter the tower’s interior, cutting energy use and providing a tranquil indoor setting.

The Solar Decathlon China 2013 is a competition that challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are Net Zero, affordable, energy-efficient and attractive.

Summer 2013 will be the first year that a team from Israel will participate in the competition, and their design incorporates passive design features, creating an improved thermal envelope to maintain a comfortable interior environment. Windows, walls, and floors collect, store, and distribute solar energy as heat in the winter and reject heat in the summer...

Since 2002, the Solar Decathlon has involved over 90 teams and influenced thousands of collegiate participants in interdisciplinary research, design and construction of energy-efficient, solar-powered houses.

For the 2014 World Cup, Brazil will roll out impressive facilities that could score LEED certification and add to its rich modern architecture legacy.

Describing any massive construction project as “green” is a stretch, especially when it comes to sports facilities. But in football-mad Brazil, plans for a bevy of new and refurbished football stadia for the 2014 World Cup are well underway.

Brazil's projects could both score international green building certifications such as LEED while adding to the country’s rich modern architecture legacy. Much of the credit for Brazil’s greening of the World Cup goes to Vicente Mello and Ian McKee, two architects who drafted the CopaVerde plan, which advocates for the most responsible construction practices possible for the event’s venues...

MJMArchitects' park renewal plan has made Chinguacousy Sports Park a hub of activity.

The local Brampton, Ontario landmark has three new pavilions which create a variety of environments suitable for a number of recreational activities. Together they lay a foundation for new activities and facilities to develop in the future. Sustainable features such as water retention systems, reflective rooves, recycled materials, highly efficient mechanical systems, and energy management controls modernize the park with a low impact on the environment.

A new park amenities and boat pavilion at the north pond connects the water course to the land activities; its wood cladding blends into the environment while framing views of the park. Deep overhangs not only contribute to passive cooling, but blur the boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces by physically and visually connecting the pavilions with the landscape. 

This effect is complemented by new lighting, landscaping and pedestrian paths throughout the park- view more photos at the link.

The Mexico-based practice SAC Studio de Arquitectura y Ciudad won first place in the Denver Architectural League’s ideas competition for riverfront micro-housing.

On Friday the Denver Architectural League announced the winners of its micro-housing ideas competition. The contest solicited designs for an eight-unit building with micro-apartments that range from 250 to 375 square feet, sited on a narrow swath of riverbank in a sparse industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of downtown. The league invited architects to imagine a structure so virtuous—net-zero, built on a leftover slope of undesirable land, virtually no parking, etc.—that its inhabitants might just be theoretical figments themselves.

All in all, the competition drew 70 proposals, 25 of which came from abroad. See more at the article link.

Designed by Campos Leckie Studio, the Zacatitos 004 Residence is the fourth and smallest home of a series of structures successfully operating off-the-grid. Located in a tiny Mexican town, roughly 45 minutes up a dirt road from San José del Cabo, this project is part of the collective of four innovative seasonal retreats.

The house greets guests into a stucco hallway that leads to a courtyard, where the house’s environmental control strategies come into play. The courtyard is properly shaded from the intense sun rays and the two entrance walls catch and amplify the winds, drawing air across the pool to naturally air-condition the exterior deck and kitchen/dining area.

Different areas of the home are slightly separated, Campos and Leckie used the separations in the architecture to fill the gaps with light and wind. The presence and orientation of walls along with choices of material passively temper the environment..

In a neighborhood of high-end retail and luxury residences, this new branch library will fulfill a much needed role as a public space and touchstone for the local community and visiting tourists across from the Museum of Modern Art. 

Despite the library’s site being predominantly below grade and set at the base of a new 40-story hotel, this design proposal transforms the dark, subterranean space into an inviting, open and light-filled civic landscape in the heart of Manhattan...

See how 12 architects used low-cost, environmentally-friendly shipping containers as modern alternatives in home design and architecture.

Shipping containers meet a variety of requirements: Modern. Check. Low-cost. Check. Environmentally-friendly. Check.

See a selection of homes that make them work.