Sustainability: The Latest Architecture and News

The ambitious and successful award-winning architect, MAA Christian Bay-Jorgensen, from the architectural firm, Bay Arch, shared with us this unique and sustainable building at the harbour in Boston, Massachusetts. With affiliates in Ringkobing and Copenhagen and with creativity and energy in the blood, Boston Fusion will contain apartments and offices to create a new, green design in every sense with the help of eco-friendly materials from Icopal. This project also forms part of the plans for a new, green quarter called South Boston. More images and architect’s description after the break.

The Morogoro International School, located in the southern highlands of Tanzania, serves as a model for sustainability and modular architecture for society. With the idea of having the school simultaneously serve as a community hub, Alma-nac architects believed they could achieve this best through their repeating linear form with an emphasis on environmental control strategies. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Swedish architect and urban strategist Mans Tham has shared with us his project proposing freeway based solar infrastructure for Los Angeles. Additional images and an extensive description from the architect after the break.

The mixed-use Campus Center designed by Oppenheim Architecture + Design for Miami Dade Community College will make a statement within the skyline of the tropical city. Popular for its flowing spaces from interior to exterior, the architects capitalized on Miami’s climate creating an open-aired campus design complete with arcades, quads, and plazas. The design incorporates a variety of materials and sustainable practices including a steel frame exo-skeletal system, clad and aluminum with clear glass aluminum window wall system, solar panels in portions of the roof, and vertical shafts wind turbines.

Here you can check out our interview with Chad Oppenheim founding partner of Oppenheim Architecture + Design featured last week on ArchDaily.

More details, drawings, and photographs about the Campus Center by Oppenheim Architecture + Design after the break.

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Architects: Oppenheim Architecture + Design Location: Miami, Florida Project Team: Chad Oppenheim, Carl Römer, Eduardo Quintero, Carlos Ramos, Germán Brun, Juan López, Sebastian Velez, Robert Moehring, Gianpaolo Pietri, Helen Zhao, Hugo Mijares, Joshua Sacks, Lizmarie Esparza, Francisco Llado, Piero Valtolina, and Santhosh Shanmugam Developer: Gregg Covin Development Client: Miami Dade Community College Project Area: 2,500,000 sqf Project Year: Estimated Completion 2012 Renderings: Dbox and Olalekan Jeyifous

‘The Building: Problem or Solution?’ competition, managed by Faith in Place, encouraged the creative design of religious buildings through the re-use and modification of existing structures. Through the collaborative ideas of architects Onat Oktem, Ziya Imren, Zeynep Oktem and Uri Tzarmotzky, their Green Mosque won the competition’s, “Best Freestanding Religious Structure”. More on the architect’s description and images after the break.

Short on space but still need the functionality of a kitchen? Check out this cool design we spotted over on Core77 designed by Netherlands-based design firm Studio Gorm. This super efficient and highly compact design creates a “living kitchen” which marries nature with technology. The kitchen provides a place for not only the preparation of food, but also the means to grow, store, and even compost food. Our favorite aspect is the vertical dish rack, which is positioned in such a way so excess water benefits the herds that sit in planter boxes beneath it.

More images, info, and a video, after the break.

Peruvian architect Carlos Bartesaghi Koc shared with us his project Systemic Agro-Tourism, for which he received an Award of Merit in the 2009 URBAN-SOS Competition. More images and architect’s description after the break.

HOK has infused green strategies into Chicago’s Greenway Self-Park facility – a not so typical place to find sustainable ideas. While the 11 story energy efficient parking garage features a naturally ventilated exterior wall, a cistern rain water collection system, a green roof, and electric car plug-in stations, we can’t get over the dozen wind turbines made by Helix Wind that attach to the external structure.

More about the self-park and more images after the break.

And while large scale initiatives have driven the green building movement here in North America and abroad, some issues have an easier time emerging as hot topics than others (think renewables). There’s no doubt that advances in those areas will, in fact, have positive impacts on the built environment, but there is an emerging group of products, technologies, materials, and design principles that seems to be taking shape in a growing number of buildings scattered across the globe.

I’m an architectural photographer based in London. For the last few years I have been working on a series of images called ecocities. I use some of the commissioned work and some of my personal work and combine this with imagery from stock libraries to produce my own version of an imagined future for London.

Although we’ve featured dozens of projects that incorporate vertical or roof gardens, we just couldn’t stop looking at this beautiful six story tall green wall by architect Jose Maria Chofre that we spotted at Urbanarbolismo. The articulated design, teamed with the variety of foliage, adds a great texture and personality to the building, a new children’s library in eastern Spain.

More images and more about the green wall after the break.