James Corner Field Operations has completed a nearly 6,000 square foot rooftop garden located in the heart of the DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn. The garden is located on top of a seventeen-story apartment complex designed by Leeser Architecture and developed by Two Trees Management. The Dock Street Rooftop Terrace allows residents to view the panoramic scenery of the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, East River, and Manhattan Skyline.
Located on four man-made islands in Iskandar Malaysia, “Forest City” is set to be South-East Asia’s largest, mixed use green development. Designed by Sasaki Associates, the master plan has an estimated investment of S$58.3 billion (US$40.9 billion) and is expected to bring around 220,000 jobs to the area. Located near the economic centers of Southeast Asia, the new Forest City is ideally placed to become a hub of commerce and culture. Designed to encourage live/work culture, it is composed of “financial institutions, high-tech research and development facilities, headquarter offices, and a variety of creative industries that establish an innovative and sustainable employment base for the region,” write the architects. Read more after the break.
Rafael Viñoly and OLIN have unveiled plans to transform Cupertino's Vallco Shopping Mall into a new mixed-use neighborhood that boasts the "world's largest green roof." The current plans call for a 15-block sustainable town center with 625,000-square-feet of retail, two-million-square-feet of office space and 800 residential units. All this, if approved, would be topped by a 30 acre public green space with a 3.8 mile trail network that runs through orchards, vineyards, an amphitheater and play areas.
Film often makes a mockery of architectural features. Glass facades are obliterated by gunfire, grisly murders are set against a white modernist palette, deconstructed stairs are the cause of nasty accidents or ludicrous slapstick, and you just know a tensile fabric roof will be shredded by the time 007 is finished with it.
There is one architectural feature however that has benefited from very complimentary treatment by the film industry, and surprisingly it is a sustainable one. Green roofs and other “architectural” green spaces have been popping up regularly in mainstream movies over the past decade: blockbusters including The Vow (2012) and Source Code (2011) utilized the greenscape outside Gehry's Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park; last year the Vancouver Convention Centre was featured in both Godzilla and Robocop; and Kaspar Schroder’s 2009 uber cool documentary My Playground, about the sport of parkour (the art of bouncing off buildings made famous by the opening scenes of Casino Royale), features BIG’s Mountain Dwellings in Copenhagen. And we cannot forget two of the biggest film franchises in history: both of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit franchises feature green roofs in their portrayal of Hobbiton – home of the virtuous and incorruptible Hobbits.
Designed to seat 33,000 people, stadiumconcept and IAA architecten’s proposal for Minsk’s newest football stadium has a unique and allusive form. The column-like supports of the stadium roof resemble tractor valves, a reference to Minsk’s booming tractor fabrication industry. These tapering columns provide a signature identity for a building that, in addition to being a stadium, will serve the city as a shopping and business center.
This article by Jonathan Ward, originally published on Arup Thoughts as "A Top-Down Approach to Flood Prevention" discusses a cheap, simple, but effective method of easing the load on drainage after a storm: temporary storage of water on flat roofs, which can not only help to prevent floods, but also provide unexpected benefits as well.
Gravity offers a simple and cheap way to attenuate stormwater flows – by storing water temporarily on a flat roof. All sorts of causes are being blamed for the current flooding in the UK; lack of dredging, poor management of catchment areas, construction on flood plains and paving over front gardens are all being mentioned in the press.
One thing is for sure – we will be paying a lot more attention to the topic given the current experience, and the fact that wetter winters are predicted in our changing climate, with a certainty of more extreme events.
Read on for an explanation of why this counter-intuitive measure actually makes perfect sense
Architects: Despang Architekten Location: Göttingen, Germany Architects In Charge: Günther Despang/Martin Despang Project Architects: Philip Hogrebe/Jörg Steveker Area: 512 sqm Year: 2010 Photographs: Jochen Stüber, Olaf Baumann
Five amazing green roof projects from earlier this year. Check them all after the break.
Sky Garden House / Guz Architects This house is located on a new housing estate on the island of Sentosa adjacent to Singapore. The plots are not large and neighbouring buildings are built close to the sides of each house. Thus our strategy was to build a solid wall to each side neighbor to provide privacy where possible, while creating a central light and stair well which would funnel the sea breeze through the centre of the building (read more…)
St. Patrick’s today, and it’s all about green! So for today’s Round Up, we have our sixth selection of previously featured green roofs! Check them all after the break.
Welham Studios / Mark Merer Welham Studios started with the study of placement, watching objects in clay and sand creating shapes through the interaction of the wind and rain. The work is looking for a union of object and environment (read more…)
A lot of amazing projects are designed now with green roofs. And for our 5th selection, we even have a Building of the Year 2009 by ACXT. Check them all after the break.
BTEK – Technology Interpretation Center / ACXT BTEK is an interpretation centre for new technologies, aimed at student visitors. The site’s location, on one of the highest points of the Vizcaya Technology Park and close to the Bilbao airport’s flight path for takeoffs and landings, helps with the aim of making the building a landmark in its landscape (read more…)
Architect Adrian Lo shared with us his proposal for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Boundary Crossing Facilities Competition. See more images and architect’s description after the break.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a medical technology campus, a residence, a housing project, or a public facility. The green roof looks amazing in this projects from all over the world. Check them all after the break.
Becton Dickinson Campus Center / RMJM The Campus Center at BD (Becton Dickinson and Company), a medical technology company that serves healthcare institutions, life science researchers, clinical laboratories, industry and the general public, is a 38,500-square-foot facility that bridges and blurs the boundaries between building/landscape, indoor/outdoor, roof/earth, figure/ground, and the two local business cultures of management/production (read more…)
The competition is dedicated to the innovation of green in urban areas. Participants can be creative professionals (landscape architects, designers, architects, planners, artists, and associations) as well as students (schools of horticulture, landscape design, architecture, etc.).
Sustainability Round Up to end the week. Some really interesting projects may be done using green roof. Here we show you our second part (see the first one here), of previously featured projects with green roof.
Dutch practice, Sponge Architects sent us their latest residencial project: Villa Panorama, where you can “enjoy the country life in a home where your dream landscape reveals itself before your own eyes”, as they say.
See some more images and drawings after the break.
In late 2008 the City of Punta Umbria, located on the coast of Huelva, Spain, organized a Competition for a Congress, Exhibition and Fairs building. MRDP Arquitectos sent us the winning entry.
The results:
1st Prize: FARO; MRDP Arquitectos | María Romero y Daniel Pérez 2nd Prize: CÓNCAVO-CONVEXO; Joaquín Aramburu y Asociados 3rd Prize: BI.VALVO; JOSÉ ÁLVAREZ CHECA
The success of green roofs has driven Landscape Architects and Architects to explore alternative exterior and interior applications of green planting technology, such as green walls, and green screens. Vertical planting presents challenges to proper irrigation and climate control, requiring innovative solutions. This panel of experts will discuss the relevance of green walls and how can we improve their applications.
