The Architecture of the City

Daylight is a highly cost-effective means of reducing the energy for electrical lighting and cooling. Education often reduces the aspect of daylight to eye-catching effects on facades and scarcely discusses its potential effects – not just on cost, but on health, well-being and energy.

This Light Matters will explore the often unexplored aspects of daylight and introduce key strategies to better incorporate daylight into design: from optimizing building orientations to choosing interior surface qualities that achieve the right reflectance. These steps can significantly reduce investment as well as operating costs and so much more...

MARS Architects snagged first place in an international competition for the design Walltopia's Collider Activity Center, Sofia's first sustainable mixed use center.

Located in Sofia, the Collider Activity Center will mark the city's first green mixed use center to combine both leisure and exercise space. To tie together the site’s diverse programs, the architects inserted a series of dramatic climbing atriums into the folds of the building, creating a continuous climbing experience.

The newly-built Allianz Riviera Stadium in Nice, France, located 15-km away from Nice’s historical centre, and sitting in the heart of the Éco-Vallée of Plaine du Var, is actually comprised of three projects – a 35,000-seat multi-purpose stadium, a sports museum and an extensive, mixed real-estate development plan – all designed to meet specific environmental and urban integration requirements.

This large-scale intervention works in a coherent and intelligible manner so as to encourage urban synergy.

Largely inspired by a flying bird, the stadium’s overall shape essentially reflects the aim to reinforce the surrounding urban fabric. Likewise, shifting services like parking, underground allows for generous green spaces connecting the building to the rest of the neighborhood.

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.

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.”

The largest natural biome in the world is the maroon colored Taiga, a Russian word for forest, covering large parts of Canada, Europe and Asia with coniferous forests.

The term “Boreal” forest refers to the southern part of this biome and has heavier tree cover while the Taiga refers to the northern portion which is a mostly barren area that borders the Arctic treeline. In order to understand how biomes work, scientists and researchers have created projects like Biosphere and Eden.

The design refers to the integration of architectural structures into natural ecosystems, emphasizing a symbiotic relationship between buildings, landscapes, people and nature.

The Gippsland Water Factory’s Vortex Centre houses office and laboratory functions and an interpretive experience for a major new water recycling plant. The vortex form of the building strongly expresses the dynamic movement of fluids down a pipe, at the same time providing a unique internal environment.

Combining cost performance, aesthetics, water education and ecological intelligence, the 650m2 facility is a beacon of exemplary sustainable design. The centre was designed as a teaching building, taking inspiration from a giant oculus, with a shell made up of seven barrels that fit into one another as they decrease in size, thereby resembling a vortex.

Team ASUNM, a collaborative effort between Arizona State University and University of New Mexico, has come together to address the inefficiencies of urban sprawl and to create a model for sustainable desert living, dubbed SHADE (Solar Home Adapting for Desert Equilibrium), which is an entry in the Solar Decathlon 2013 competition that takes place on October 3-13, 2013 in Irvine, California.

Using external vertical screens and a solar canopy for shade, the SHADE home experiences a stable, consistent temperature with the use of a radiant cooling system used alongside an air cooling unit. Team ASUNM is exploring the residential application of thermal storage to chill water at night to create ice that cools a glycol solution during the day.

Construction has started on a cave hotel resort by Atkins that will nestle into the rockface of an abandoned water-filled quarry near Shanghai, China.

Once complete, the hotel will offer around 400 rooms, as well as conference facilities, a banquet hall, restaurants, a swimming pool and a water-sports centre.

The building will use geothermal technologies to generate its own electricity and lighting, while greenery will blanket a roof that extends just two storeys above the edge of the quarry.

Sustainability is integral to Atkins' design of this unique resort, built into an abandoned, water-filled quarry.

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...

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....

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...