Category: Architecture

The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) 500 employees will now be housed in a new building in Lausanne, Switzerland–and it just might be the most sustainable building in the world at present.

So what makes this building eco-friendly?

• a green roof
• 95% of the building materials are reused or recycled
• a rainwater collection system
• solar panels
• self-shading, meaning it’s designed in a way that reduces the need for air conditioning while still allowing daylight in

Construction on the building, which was designed by Danish firm 3XN and built in collaboration with IttenBrechbühl, began in May 2016 and cost $147 million. 3XN provides more details about their idea for the IOC’s headquarters on their website.

Photo by Adam MØRK/IOC

Stefano Boeri Architetti is at it again with its vertical forest towers. One of its latest such project is Nanjing Towers in China, but an even newer one is being planned in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Called the Hawthorn Tower, the building is to be a part of the Wonderwoods development and is planned to be a 90 m tall structure that houses 200 apartments, with a façade that features 10,000 plants of different species (360 trees, 9,640 shrubs and flowers), which is equal to 1 ha of woods. The ground floor will be home to the Vertical Forest Hub, a research center on urban forestation worldwide. Once the structure is complete, Hawthorn Tower is expected to absorb approximately 5,400 kg of CO2 and fine particles, and producing approximately 41,400 tons of oxygen a year.

Photo from Stefano Boeri Architetti’s Hawthorn Tower page

In 2011, plans for a vertical forest in Milan were announced. Stefano Boeri Architetti was the brains behind the project, and Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) was formally opened in October 2014, featuring a pair of residential towers in the Porta Nuova district of Milan. Bosco Verticale has since won quite a few awards; the jury of International Highrise Award (IHP) 2014 considered the project the world’s most innovative highrise, and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat promoted by the Illinois Institute of Technology of Chicago has recognized Bosco Verticale as the Best Tall Building of 2015.

The second vertical forest by the same company is set to rise in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the project features apartments, a gym, offices, and a restaurant on the top floor. Construction is set to begin this year on the 117-meter-tall building, which will be called “La Tour des Cedres” or “The Cedar Trees Tower.”

Now the vertical forest concept is being brought to Asia for the first time with the Nanjing Towers, which will rise in Pukou District of Nanjing, China, and is expected to feature 1,100 flourishing trees from 23 local species, as well as 2,500 cascading shrubs and plants. Overall, the buildings are expected to produce 132 pounds of oxygen every day. The taller tower (200 meters tall) will house offices, a museum, a green architecture school, and a private club on the rooftop. The smaller tower (108 meters tall) will house a Hyatt hotel and a rooftop swimming pool, and the podium will contain restaurants, a conference hall, and shops, among others.

Photo: Stefano Boeri Architetti

Eco-friendly buildings these days are setting themselves apart not only With their environmentally responsible materials, mode of construction, and facilities, but also with their unique looks. Oasia Hotel Downtown in Singapore is no exception. Completed in April 2016, Oasia Hotel Downtown in Singapore was designed by WOHA, an architecture firm in Singapore, and described as a “living tower.” In fact, WOHA says that the building “combines innovative ways to intensify land use with a tropical approach that showcases a perforated, permeable, furry, verdant tower of green in the heart of Singapore’s Central Business District (CBD).”

Furry, verdant tower. Who wouldn’t be interested in that kind of building?

The open areas of the building are cooled through cross ventilation. Each floor of the hotel has sky gardens, and the plants in each floor are planted in a way that makes them fairly low maintenance, and they help to cool the building as well. If the plants continue to grow well, then the building could be covered in them in about a year. According to Richard Hassell, cofounder of WOHA, in an interview with Curbed, “Examining the central business districts of so many cities is like looking at the moon from the Earth; one is filled with life, the other is just this collection of dead stone. With Oasia, we’ve seen so many birds and insects flying around the building. People respond so well to seeing a hummingbird flying right outside their office window.”

Preparations for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, are underway, and such preparations include the construction of accommodations for guests to the county of Pyeongchang in the province of Gangwon, South Korea. The Plus Partners and DNC Architects have worked together to create a tiny house in the city of Gangneung, where the indoor events will be held. Such a tiny house will serve as a home to visitors who will be attending the Olympic events.

The tiny house is made of environmentally friendly materials, which complement the beauty of the local area, and it features a windowed living room, a bathroom, a kitchenette, and a loft that functions as a bedroom. More of such tiny houses are going to be built to accommodate more visitors and address the shortage of lodging in the province.

Photos by Moobum Jang

Tony Wrench and Jane Faith are living lives that many of us won’t be able to survive, but which a number of us most likely dream about. For starters, they don’t own a car, and they earn a living from their music and their homemade crafts. And of course, they live in the house shown in the picture above.

The house is called The Roundhouse and is located in Brithir Mawr, Wales. The house is made with wood frame, cobwood, recycled window walls, and a straw-insulated turf roof, and is powered by solar panels on the roof and by a wind turbine located 70 yards away. They have to be pretty careful about using power during winter, however, because, for example, using a laptop too much uses up a lot of electricity and when that happens, the house has to go without power for a while. The house is fitted with a compost toilet. A woodstove is used to generate heat and the owners get their water from a well.

The Asian Development Bank has been hard at work making sure that its headquarters is more energy-efficient. A lot of changes have already been implemented, starting with its Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Power Plant Project which generates 613 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity per year. More than 2,000 PV modules were installed on its roof area, and 50 solar panels were installed on the rooftop of the ADB’s parking garage. Lights around the building have also been replaced with LED lamps. Hybrid cars have been added to its fleet as well. Anidolic mirrors are interesting additions to the building, because they work to “scoop” daylight and direct it into the building, thus reducing the need for and use of artificial light.

_{Photos and information from the ADB Facebook page.}