Gensler, in partnership with Avon Lake Environmental Redevelopment Group (ALERG), City of Avon Lake, and Avison Young, have presented initial redevelopment plans for the environmental remediation and sustainable redevelopment of the historic Avon Lake Generating Station in Avon Lake, Ohio. The redevelopment scheme will serve as an opportunity to reframe the former coal-fired powerplant site into a regional attraction while restoring the lakefront ecosystem.
UK-based architecture firm AL_A has collaborated with Canadian energy firm General Fusion to develop the world's first magnetized target fusion facility on the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) campus in Culham, United Kingdom. The energy firm wanted to "transform how the world is energized by replicating the process that powers the sun and stars". AL_A's design proposes a first-of-its-kind facility with open spaces and see-through partitions that provides innovative carbon-free energy solutions.
The island nation of Taiwan is a country that boasts both a high population density and a wide range of ecosystems. However, a large issue that the country is currently facing involves the energy production and consumption, and the negative impact it has on the environment. With the largest power plant slated to be shut down by 2023, a team from Taiwan has devised an architectural proposal for how to construct a plant that both generates enough electricity to serve the metropolitan area and reduce its negative impact on the air quality and surrounding wetlands.
What if a power plant could also be a home, an office, or even a park? That is the question behind Cypher CO2ling Plant, a conceptual design developed by Kawan Golmohamadi, Shilan Golmohamadi, and Soad Moarefi. Power plants are a ubiquitous and inevitable byproduct of modern lifestyles, but they are typically located in remote areas, far from where the power is actually needed, due to their unsightly appearance and the emissions associated with combustion-fueled energy generation. Cypher CO2ling Plant proposes an alternative scenario that utilizes the infrastructure of the power plant’s cooling towers to support mixed-use development, while also mitigating the less desirable aspects of energy generation.
Winners have been announced for the 2014 Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI). The competition, this year sited in Copenhagen, calls on interdisciplinary teams to design large scale site-specific artworks that provide renewable electricity to the city at a utility-scale (equivalent to the demand of hundreds or even thousands of homes). Once constructed, these public infrastructure artworks have the potential to offset thousands of tons of CO2 and provide iconic amenities that will serve to educate and inspire the communities in which they are built.
Check out the winning energy-generating sculptures, after the break.
Although necessary, power plants are typically an eyesore that don't attract much positive attention. As Thomas Heatherwick put it, "we are ashamed of how we generate our energy." Breaking the mold, a competition-winning proposal by architecture firm AZPA (Alejandro Zaera-Polo Arquitectura) plans to transform a German power plant into a densely-forested "green mountain", which will in turn be a landmark public space for a town.
Read more after the break...
