sustainable architecture

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.

NASA's new Sustainability Base was designed by William McDonough + Partners to embody the spirit of NASA while fostering collaboration, supporting health and well-being, and exceeding the requirements of LEED® Platinum.

An exoskeleton approach provides for structural stability during seismic events, facilitates glare-free daylighting and shading, natural ventilation and connection to the outdoors, and flexibility of the workspace with its column-free interior.

Atop the two-story 50,000-square-foot building is a solid-oxide fuel cell and rooftop solar arrays, supplying the building with more energy than it requires and sending surplus back to the grid at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Currently running on natural gas, the fuel cell is ready to be converted to landfill gas when a source is available...

Architex has completed a project in Auckland, New Zealand, consisting of a home that exhales transparency and seeks to establish a dialogue between the interior living space and the outdoor environment.

City House is a private oasis of relaxation. With the goal of creating a place that disconnects from a busy professional life, the standard wall configurations disappear, enhancing the feeling of breeziness and freedom. 

“Sliding glass panels disappear into pockets to create open balconies for living and sleeping, and focus on the central courtyard as their oasis. The street facade is particularly private with only a hint of the sophistication that lies beyond in the selection of colour and materials.”

View more images of this beutiful, contextual and modern at the article link...

California builder Simpatico Homes specializes in modern modular homes, and recently completed a prototype located in Emeryville, in Alameda County, California.

From Swatt | Miers Architects:

“The partnership with Simpatico Homes represents an opportunity for our firm to bring custom-quality architecture to a broader audience through the cost advantages of prefabrication.

The Krubiner Residence, the Simpatico Prototype, is located in Emeryville just a few blocks from our office.

The Simpatico Homes represent a unique opportunity to transform housing, by combining modern design with off-site prefabrication and LEED-certified sustainability.”

Like the iconic waterfront Sydney Opera House, the Wuxi Grand Theatre, built by Finland’s PES-Architects, benefits from its location.

Located on a manmade peninsula, the theater is highly visible from all directions- a prime spot that provided the opportunity to construct an eye-catching roof that places the building in a direct dialogue with the city’s weather. Eight massive steel wings stretch out from the roof 50 meters high, adding a distinct sculptural element while reflecting direct sunlight, sheltering interior spaces from excessive heat. The slanted roof also works to harvest rainwater, taking advantage of the local climate and reducing the building’s impact on the environment.

Thousands of LED lights illuminate the aluminum wings; inside, the Main Auditorium is covered by over 15,000 bamboo blocks, capturing the local character while infusing a distinctly Finnish element in its forms and materials.

One year after its opening, the theater has seamlessly integrated its green terraces and lakeside landscape into the urban context and local culture...

Conceived as a camp, this luxury family retreat was designed by Fearon Hay Architects as an arrangement of freestanding structures around a courtyard, set in a saddle above Matiatia Bay on Waiheke Island in New Zealand.

Care had to be taken to reduce exposure of the home to high winds; natural undulations of the saddle have been subtly emphasized to form a protective setting for three structures, comprising living, sleeping and studio areas. Retractable glass panels and perforated aluminium screens offer variations of enclosure to the living and sleeping spaces. The raw and robust materials are countered by the placement of fires, the invitation of leather cushioning around a sunken sitting area and the use of linen fabrics and oiled natural timber throughout the spaces.

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.”

Sky City in Changsha, China, will be 2750 feet tall, 220 stories, housing 30,000 people in 4450 apartments, with excavation and construction slated to begin in June, 2013.

Aiming to accommodate a growing population, the skyscraper is considered a "pragmatic" building, designed for efficiency, affordability, replicability.

The Sky City concept significantly reduces the per capita use of land, and the associated CO2 emissions generated, thus providing a means of large-scale development with a significantly lower impact on the environment.

As a result, a resident of Sky City will be using 1/100th the average land per person- learn more about this innovative building concept and its sustainable features at Treehugger.

Located in Martinborough, New Zealand, Cornege-Preston House cleverly mixes modern amenities with a peaceful rural environment atmosphere.

Envisioned by architectural firm Bonnifait + Giesen, the 2,153 square foot contemporary residence offers plenty of sustainable features, such as double-glazed windows and skylights for cross-room solar penetration and heat retention, water heating by solar hot water panel on roof topped up by thermostat-controlled electricity and two 25,000 litre tanks capturing rainwater...

The Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences was designed by Perkins+Will in New York, with an intriguing and innovative sustainable design.

The concept, characterised by an irregular folded-like structure wrapped in copper, aims to mark a new 'Front Door' for the School of Engineering. The building is organized around a multi-story gallery that allows students to circulate easily through the space. The intriguing learning space is vibrant and breezy; students can sit, discuss projects or share ideas over a cup of coffee in the multi-story student lounge.

Seeking LEED Gold, efficient strategies include improved building shell insulation, high-performance windows, energy efficient lighting design with occupancy and photo sensor control.

Sustainable architecture is a term that represents a broad range of concepts, processes and ideologies, and can be interpreted and realized in countless ways.

Sustainability represents a design process that accounts for the environment on both the micro and macro scales, serves the needs of the program with as minimal an impact on the planet as possible, and positively contributes to the community, not only aesthetically, but in social, economic and cultural realms, as well.

So, to celebrate Earth Week, here are a few of our favorite green buildings...

Designed by ZeroEnergy Design, this modern green home featuring a spectacular water and sunset view is located in Truro, Massachusetts.

The west-facing orientation for glazing isn’t ideal for energy performance, so the rest of the building envelope was designed to offset the expansive view windows. Double stud framing allows a continuous layer of foam insulation and a geothermal system, coupled with a radiant heating system, will supply all of the heating and cooling for the year. In addition to energy efficient appliances and water heaters, all of the spaces are well illuminated using energy efficient fixtures.

The roof sports a large solar electric array to offset energy usage through the use of net metering. A battery back-up and energy management system will store electricity from the solar array; the combination the energy efficient building envelope and systems will allow the home to produce nearly as much energy as it uses over the course of a year...

This small vacation house is designed as a stairway to the treetops.

Keeping the footprint to a minimum so as not to disturb the wooded site, each of the three floors has only one small bedroom and bath, each a tiny private suite. The fourth floor, which contains the living spaces, spreads out from the tower like the surrounding forest canopy, providing views of the lake and mountains in the distance, virtually the entire Catskill Mountain range. The glass-enclosed stair highlights the procession from forest floor to treetop aerie, while the dark green enameled exterior camouflages the house by reflecting the surrounding woods, and dematerializing its form...

This retreat in a small town in the northern Andes is located two hours north of Quito, at an orchard site 2470 meters above sea level, between the Imbabura and Cotacachi mountains.

This typological variation of the traditional courtyard type, through understanding the modern bi-nuclear house, combined with the properties of rammed earth construction and the layering of lighter complementary materials, strive towards a synthesis of the local and the universal, towards continuity through variation...