Sustainability: The Latest Architecture and News

Dutch firm Shift Architecture Urbanism is the winner of a first prize, two second prizes and a third prize in the competition for an eco-retail development, the Groene Kamer, in Tilburg, the Netherlands. The aim of the development is to create a new type of country estate where eco-retail, nature and recreation are brought together in an innovative way; A place where city and countryside meet, both physically and programmatically. The competition’s goal was to select the designers of four different building typologies which will populate the masterplan designed by Fabric and Lola landscape architects. Shift’s design, Topos, makes use of a topographic approach that allows for a profound integration of architecture and landscape. More images and architects’ description after the break.

In more recent times, the importance of the changing climate and its effects on the environment are being given more attention in regard to design practices. As a result, sustainable work spaces are becoming more prominent and some may even argue that a more energy efficient building correlates to a more efficient and productive work environment. With a growing demand for energy efficient buildings comes a greater responsibility of architects today and in the future.  In turn, officer owners and managers are also placed under increasing obligations to be focused on cutting down on productivity costs and to find more sustainable ways of going about their business endeavors. Companies are coming to the realization that investing in ‘green’ principles is more profitable in the long run.

In this post we are going to present to you office buildings that offer sustainable techniques through innovative architecture.

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) was commissioned by the Government Services Administration (GSA) to conduct a post-occupancy evaluation of 22 “green” federal buildings from across the United States. The report stats reveal that not only does these “green” buildings emit 34 percent less carbon dioxide and are using 11 percent less water, they cost on average 19 percent less to maintain. In addition to the environmental and economical savings, the evaluation reports that the occupants are more satisfied in the “green” buildings by 27 percent.

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Oppenheim Architecture + Design recently won the international competition to design a new hotel in Brooklyn, NY. A third pillar of the Williamsburg Bridge to emerge after 108 years. Their design of the Williamsburg hotel attempts to capture the essence of this vibrant neighborhood. Adjacent to both the Williamsburg Bridge and the historic Williamsburg Savings Bank, the building expresses itself as three dramatically proportioned, rectilinear volumes of varied height and materiality. Soaring high above the neighborhood, the hotel becomes the third pillar of the bridge, while serving as an archetypical tower to the domed basilica of the historical bank.

Sustainability was once again an important issue for Oppenheim Architecture + Design. The hotel will have geothermal, wind, and solar power generation, along with other resource saving strategies, for which they achieved Platinum LEED rating. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The University of Melbourne together with partners including the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development have just announced CMA+U and Team winners of the Sustainability Award ʻFuture Proofing Schools Competitionʼ Australia. The competition explores design ideas for next generation relocatable 21st century learning spaces as part of Australia’s research program for Building the Education Revolution. More images and information on the awarded project after the break.

The Masters of International Cooperation Sustainable Emergency Architecture at the ESARQ-UIC in Barcelona is excited to present this year’s open conference on December 12th titled, Rebuilding Japan: Lessons in architectural response, featuring talks and a roundtable discussion with Japanese architects involved in the reconstruction of Japan during its recent history of devastating earthquakes. How can architects respond in the aftermath of a natural disaster? What lessons can be learned from the last three major earthquakes in Japan? How does the context of a natural disaster affect the role of the architect and the reconstruction process? More information on the conference after the break.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded $97 million dollars to 27 regions and 29 communities across 32 states with the 2011 Sustainable Communities Grants. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan stated, “These grants will be leveraged with local funds more than doubling the investment and, helping to create new visions for how communities and regions plan for housing, transportation, workforce development and the quality of life of their residents for generations to come. When more than half of the average working family’s income is devoted to housing and transportation costs alone, we know that we have a responsibility to fix that and to provide housing and transportation options that can improve their quality of life and economic stability.”

The Asia Pacific winners of the Holcim Awards for sustainable construction were recently announced in Singapore. The Holcim Awards is an international competition that recognizes innovative projects and future-oriented concepts on regional and global levels. The competition is designed to encourage architects, planners, engineers and project owners to go beyond conventional notions of sustainable construction in their work and to harmonize ecological, social and economic concerns. Projects and concepts in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and related fields are eligible for entry in the competition. More images and information on the winning competition proposals after the break.

The future potential to build and realize the concepts of the human mind lie just there, within the potential of the human mind. For years the architectural world has been struggling to keep up with the ability of pen-to-paper and the recent advents in NURB surface computer modeling, algorithmic and parametric architecture. This in-return has led to the  building and technology industry playing catch-up with the recent advances in 3D architectural visualizations. In fact, as computer-aided design invaded these practices in the 1980s, radically transforming their generative foundations and productive capacities, architecture found itself most out-of-step and least alert, immersed in ideological and tautological debates and adrift in a realm of referents severed from material production.

Open Source Ecology

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Conceived and promoted by the Ferrara Faculty of Architecture, Italy, with the financial support of the Fassa Bortolo company, the aim of the International Award for Sustainable Architecture, now in its ninth edition, is to contribute to the research of a system of development in the building sector. This represents one of the fields of human activity with the greatest impact on the environment, that is more sustainable than our current model, which has lead to a state of deterioration and pollution, bringing us to the verge of a global crisis of the Earth’s entire ecological system.

At the Second Exhibition Forum on Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Garden Art last week in Moscow, the project Green River Project Brateevo has been awarded with the Russian National Award on Landscape Architecture. The project, designed by OKRA landscape architects, is a joint cooperation between Russia and the Netherlands. Supported by the Dutch Government, the Department for Natural Resource Management and Environmental Protection of Moscow and the Dutch Government Service for Land and Water management (DLG), are working together with the Dutch consultancy OKRA landscape architects, the Russian consultancy Ampir landscape architects and the Research and Design Institute for the Master Plan of Moscow on the development and exchange of ideas for a sustainable cityscape. Objective is to develop a toolkit for sustainable green development as an integral part of urban redevelopment. More images and project description after the break.

An increasing trend towards sustainable construction within the building industry has resulted in a steady stream of “green” products into the marketplace. It is not uncommon to see products labeled with numerous claims that are certified by previously unheard of governing bodies. Industry leaders recently gathered in Toronto at Greenbuild to focus on avenues to increase the transparency of such claims made in the marketplace, and develop an integrated information source to reduce confusion and increase reliability.

An additional music room or a performance hall for schools, a pleasant social space for residential apartments or a self-sufficient housing for the homeless. The “Bird’s Nest”, designed by Onat Öktem, Ziya Imren and Zeynep Öktem, can adopt itself both in content and in size to where it “perches”. By placing two-meter long units side by side, the “Bird Nest” can be elongated to the desired dimensions. Their concept was selected as Special Mention: Director’s Choice for the 2011 d3 Natural Systems international architectural design competition. More images and project description after the break.

The aim of the sustainable residential complex, designed by Morfearch, is not only the production of new buildings able to satisfy living space requests, but the will to offer public services to the new settlement and open to the “outer” population. The project area, crossed north to south by divergent paths, generates trapezoidal spaces that become the generating principle of the different parts of the whole complex: every secondary parcel is indeed composed by different size tanks, 30 to 120cm high, open to different uses, materials, and patterns: green areas, water, paved spaces, vegetation and gardens, available for residents with a leisure, but also social, function. More images and architects’ description after the break.