The Architecture of the City

On a hot day, instead of cranking up the air conditioning, this house transforms: A screen and shell move out to wrap around the entire home, shading everything so it cools down.

"It provides this flexible control over heat gain from sunlight," says architect Todd Fix, who compares the screen and shell to extra layers of clothes you can put on or take off. "So if it's a cold day, the sensor will sense that, and it will close both to keep the heat inside. If you want more light in the space, you can open up the screen or open up the shell."

It's a way to create a passive, zero-energy home without the typical passive house design. "The living area is all glass, from the walls and ceiling to the floors," Fix says. "This opens up a house. Instead of having really thick, insulated walls that are opaque, so you can't see out or see in, it kind of opens you up to the environment."

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...

A mantra here is that "the greenest building is the one already standing." There have been far too many posts about the loss of yet another Paul Rudolph houseor the razing of yet another brutalist classic. Often it is claimed that modern buildings are energy sinkholes and are impossible to modernize.

Then there is the Williams-Levant house, built by architect and former Frank Lloyd Wright employee Barry Byrne in 1934 for the pianist/ comedian Oscar Levant in Westport, Connecticut. It not only has been saved and modernized, but it actually has been renovated to Passivhaus standards, no easy feat, by Doug Mcdonald of Mudagreen.com, with Ken Levenson and Gregory Duncan as Passive House consultant...

The original Passivhaus standard was designed for new construction, with siting and sun angles being an important consideration. You can't do much about that in a renovation, so a special standard, EnerPHit, was developed by the German Passivhaus Institute. It calls for a reduction in thermal bridges, improved air tightness, high quality windows and a LOT of insulation, resulting in energy savings of between 75 and 90%...

Read the complete article for more on the strategies employed in the modernization of this historic structure.

BREEAM is the world’s foremost environmental assessment method and rating system for buildings, with 200,000 buildings certified and around a million registered for assessment since it was first launched in 1990.

The largest commercial office in Manchester has now become the highest scoring BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ building in the UK with a score of 95.32%.

Designed by 3DReid, The Co-operative Group’s new £115 million low-energy, highly sustainable headquarters brings their 3,500 staff under one roof in a spectacular 500,000 square foot building.  

The building, known as 1 Angel Square, has been designed to deliver a 50 per cent reduction in energy consumption compared to The Co-operative’s current Manchester complex and an 80 per cent reduction in carbon. This will lead to operating costs being lowered by up to 30 per cent...

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.

Taipei just broke ground on a twisting skyscraper that is wrapped with a jungle of vertical gardens...

Designed by Vincent Callebaut Architecture, the 455,000-square-foot Agora Tower will have an orchard, a vegetable garden, space for aromatic and medicinal plants, and a compost and rainwater capture system.

Designed to mimic two encircling hands and the helical structure of DNA, the towers are organized a central core that allows for a “hyper-abundance of suspended gardens.” These will spill over with edible and decorative plants, enabling residents of 40 luxury apartments to harvest a great deal of their own food (except for protein.) Plus, the rainwater capture system alleviates pressure on the municipal water supply and gives the complex even greater independence.

Each 540 square meter apartment will have an interior green wall as well, ensuring optimum air quality and a great green aesthetics. A circular light funnel will push daylighting right down to the basement of the building, a solar roof will provide energy, and low E glass will mitigate excess solar gain and prevent thermal loss.

Complete with nanotechnology and a host of other high-tech features, this one-of-a-kind tower may well be the greenest of its kind when it is completed circa 2016....

Part office, part exhibition space, a new London landmark aims to challenge our assumptions about green design.

A new building in east London’s Royal Victoria Docks aims to change public perceptions of green architecture – while trialling some new sustainable technologies and approaches at scale. There’s not a green roof or thick insulated wall in sight. In fact, the structure, which is called the Crystal, is everything we’ve come to believe a sustainable building shouldn’t be: lightweight, angular, glazed from top to bottom and with a roof made out of steel.

Part office space, part interactive exhibition about the future of cities, the building is intended as a living experiment in sustainability that business leaders, politicians and the general public alike can learn from. “The building is a great demonstration of the ‘art of the possible’”, says Martin Hunt, Head of Networks and Partnerships at Forum for the Future. “It’s refreshing to see an interactive exhibition that visualises what our cities could be like – based on high quality research and thoughtful benchmarking. It brings the big issues of urban living – such as water and energy consumption, public health and safety – to life in a way that engages people and inspires them.”