RIP Nyla.

Greenscrapers: Part Deux

Top Ten Green Skyscrapers

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5.The CIS Tower - Manchester, England 

The CIS Tower outdoes the pretty much anyone in solar. Weighing in with over 7,000 panels on the facade and 24 wind turbines on the roof, the CIS Tower will be able to produce 10% of its energy needs all on its own.

4.The Lighthouse Tower - Dubai, United Arab Emirates

The Dubai International Financial Centre Lighthouse Tower plans to use 4000 photovoltaic panels on the south facing facade as well as three mega 225 kilowatt wind turbines to meet its electricity needs. Other details are sparse, if it was under construction this definitely would have broken into the top three.  

3. Bank of America Tower - New York City, New York

 
The designers of Bank of America Tower, Cook + Fox Architects, are hoping to one-up the Hearst Tower by going for LEED Platinum certification. We'll see if they pull it off next year, when the building is slated to cut the red ribbon. Like the Hearst, The BOA tower will also use rainwater capture and floor-to-ceiling windows for natural lighting. Natural gas fuel cells will create on-site electricity, and sunlight-sensing LED lights will maximize efficiency. 

2. The Pearl River Tower - Guangzhou, China

Another greenscraper designed to harness winds at lofty heights, the Pearl River Tower will use internal wind turbines to keep the lights on. Fashioned like a giant wing, the tower pushes air through wind tunnels on two of the building's 71 stories. This eco-marvel of a building will also employ geothermal heat sinks, ventilated facades, waterless urinals, integrated photovoltaics and daylight responsive controls when it opens in late 2009.  

1.The Bahrain World Trade Center Towers - Kingdom of Bahrain

 Three 96-foot propellers suspended between the towers will supply the 42-storey spires with over 1100 megawatts per year. The shape of the building itself will create an accelerated airflow for the jumbo blades. Here are some virtual views of the Arabian Gulf from various levels of the building. Real views can be appreciated later this year, when the building opens.  

Well,  there you have it. The top ten. Pretty cool, huh?

Is Russian...

Rising above the skyline of Khanty Mansiysk in Siberia, this mixed use tower will be a new landmark, providing crucial amenities for the city, sheltered from the harsh local climate. The concept is driven by a progressive environmental strategy that is expected to establish new benchmarks for the region.

Set high on a hill in a densely wooded area, the tower rises above two podium buildings each facetted like a cut diamond, reflecting and refracting natural light to illuminate the interior. At the summit, a viewing platform and restaurant offer panoramic views over the city.

The development will take advantage of a number of sustainable energy strategies and key to the energy performance of the building are its atria, designed to facilitate solar gain and to encourage daylight to permeate the complex.

A sensitive insertion into the landscape, the design ensures that much of the site remains in its natural condition

Greenscrapers Get High (see what I did there?)

Top Ten Green Skyscrapers

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10: The Urban Cactus - Rotterdam, Nederland

The Urban Cactus is a residential project in the Netherlands that will offer 98 residential units on 19 floors. Thanks to the staggered design of the curvy balconies, each unit's outdoor space will get plenty of light from the sun. That means that this "greenscraper" really will be green when all the residents' gardens are in bloom. While this tower may lack in the technology department, its carbon-mitigation potential still looms high thanks to all the photosynthesis happening on the porch.

9. 340 on the Park - Chicago, Illinois

When 340 on the Park opens later this year in Chicago, it may become the first residential "greenscraper" in the city to meet LEED standards. If you have $700K to throw down on a 1600 square-foot condo, you can enjoy low utility bills thanks to the building's fully insulated windows and rainwater capture system. And the most awesome amenity is the multistory winter garden starting on floor 25.

8.Waugh Thistleton Residential Tower - London, England 

 On the other side of the pond, the Waugh Thistleton Architects have an eco-residential building in the works as well. This design will employ helical wind turbine technology.  Four turbines attached to one side of the

tower have the potential to generate 40,000kW hrs a year, more than 15% of its energy needs.  

7.The Burj al-Taqa (Energy Tower) - Dubai, United Arab Emirates

If this 68-story "super greenscraper" becomes a reality, it may become the tallest of all eco-towers, thanks to the proposed 200-foot wind turbine that will sit atop the building. Burj al-Taqa will occupy #22 on the world's tallest buildings list should it gets the green light.

Wind isn't this greenscaper's only bag, however. Solar panels will cover a 161,459 square foot artificial island chain connected to the building and seawater will power Burj al-Taqa's air conditioner!

6. The Hearst Tower, New York City, New York

The Hearst Tower became New York City's first skyscraper to achieve LEED Gold accreditation from the USGBC when it opened its doors last year. 80% of the steel used to make the behemoth was recycled. On the inside, the floors and ceiling tiles are made from recycled materials as well.

The diamond shapes on the building's facade aren't just for show either. The diagonal grid required fewer steel beams to achieve the same rigidity as a conventional skyscraper, and the design allows more natural light to enter the tower.

What's more, rainwater is collected on the roof and is funneled into a 14,000-gallon tank in the basement. The Hearst gathers enough water from the sky to account for 50% of the tower's usage. It's pumped into the cooling system, used for irrigating plants and for the innovative water sculpture in the main lobby.


 For more information on the Top Ten, look here. (But not until I reveal the top five. That would be cheating.)

Living Light

Living Light is a building facade of the future that displays air quality and public interest in the environment. It is a permanent outdoor pavilion in Peace Park, across from World Cup Stadium in Seoul, Korea.

Hard to believe the Dutch are known for their weed.

NL architects, Pieter Bannenberg, Walter van Dijk and Kamiel Klaasse, presented "Virtual Realities" a
photographic exhibition, at the Venice Architecture Biennale. the works discuss the present position of
the architect, which at times seems non-existent as there are so many middlemen involved in projects
these days that they seem to take forever to complete. but, we have a savior in Photoshop. it gives us the ability, with the click of a few buttons, to communicate ideas and envision what something could look like. 

NL Architects have exhibited large photographic works which deal with these fast changing times and methods of seeing something before it is completed. They give us a glimpse into the future and the direction in which our built, and some natural environments, could potentially take us. One of the photographs was "Cruise City, City Cruise". Cruise ships are considered "parasites" which infest each port they dock at with loads of tourists. Are there ways in which cities can begin to benefit from these vessels? How can cities begin to benefit from these vessels that enter the ports of various cities? And what are the possibilities?

 

Transforming the modern "windmill", the turbine, within the traditional dutch landscape, NL Architects question whether it is possible to come up with a monument-type structure, such as the Eiffel Tower, which is dedicated to producing environmentally friendly energy. They have come up with ideas on how to combine multiple wind turbines into one structure with "flower power". The result looks like stems growing out of the ground, with turbines which look like flowers turning in the air.

Products which surround us often have unused capacities, we only use a fraction of their potential.
"Minimum speed 200 km/h" takes the opportunity to maximize their potential which seems almost too much
like an amusement park.

More information on the fun available from NL Architects.

Eco-architecture Gets High

For the 150 anniversary of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, a collaboration of the school with the Swiss Alpine-Club will give birth to a eco-friendly alpine hut on the Mt Rose. At 2883 meters in the heart of the Swiss Alpes, this high-tech building will get 90% of its energy from the sun and the water will come from the surrounding glaciers.

 Elevations of the building.

 Models of inside the building.

Visit the project’s website for more infos.

1,000 Year-Old Terrace Agriculture Utilized in Urban Setting

 

One of the biggest challenges in architecture is to create homes that provide more than just shelter. We’re on a slow march of strip mining our resources so the question is, can a home benefit the community and in turn, the environment? Agricultural Urbanism is a proposed residential project that combines thousand year old terrance farming with modern construction.

Each level has its own terrace where a number of crops can be grown privately and communally. Harvests can be shared and sold to supplement incomes. The irregular shape was designed to follow the way the sun moves across the sky to give plants the most amount of sunlight. The substrate not only provides ample grounds for farming, but a natural insulating layer keeping the entire building cool in the summers and warm in the winters. The benefits of vertical farming are two fold. Pests don’t like this kind of structure and runoff is minimized since the entire system is self regulated.

 

More information available here.

The Fun Theory Asks: Can We Get More People To Use the Stairs by Making it More fun to Do?

Density...I has it.

Gold Nanoparticles Could Transform Trees Into Street Lights

Street lights are an important part of our urban infrastructure — they light our way home and make the roads safe at night. But what if we could create natural street lights that don’t need electricity to power them? A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees, causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an ingenious one – not only would it save on electricity costs and cut CO2 emissions, but it could also greatly reduce light pollution in major cities.

The discovery came about accidentally after the scientists were looking for a way to create high-efficiency lighting similar to LED technology, but without using toxic chemicals such as phosphor powder. Speaking about the development, Professor Shih-Hui Chang said, “Light emitting diode (LED) has replaced traditional light source in many display panels and street lights on the road. A lot of light emitting diode, especially white light emitting diode, uses phosphor powder to stimulate light of different wavelengths. However, phosphor powder is highly toxic and its price is expensive. As a result, Dr. Yen-Hsun Wu had the idea to discover a method that is less toxic to replace phosphor powder. This is a major motivation for him to engage in the research at the first place.”

By implanting the gold nanoparticles into the leaves of the Bacopa caroliniana plants, the scientists were able to induce the chlorophyll in the leaves to produce a red emission. Under a high wavelength of ultraviolet light, the gold nanoparticles were able to produce a blue-violet fluorescence to trigger a red emission in the surrounding chlorophyll.

“In the future, bio-LED could be used to make roadside trees luminescent at night. This will save energy and absorb CO₂ as the bio-LED luminescence will cause the chloroplast to conduct photosynthesis,” Dr. Yen-Hsun Su said in an interview with Chemistry World. The Royal Society of Chemistry, the largest organization in Europe for advancing the chemical sciences, has applauded the discovery and published the paper by lead scientist Dr. Yen-Hsun Wu in the journal Nanoscale.

Old Red Goes Green: Recycled Wall Brick Designed to Save Water

 

Designed by Jin-young Yoon to be made from recycled plastic and decomposed leaves, this brick is green from the ground up (so to speak). More than just its composite materials, however, built-in grooves are designed to funnel water for gardening or even long-term underground storage.

source: dornob.com

Leave it to the Swedes to design the coolest subway ever.

 

 

 

 

Thanks to  artbns.com for the pics!

Well, I guess this is one way to deal with global warming.

 The year is 2046 and the North and South Pole icebergs have melted, more than 40 percent of the Earth’s surface is underwater. The challenge is to build a skyscraper undersea with movable spheres and conducting tissue structures.

The new skyscraper would be located in the south western part of Eurasia near Taiwan. It will be equipped with a green ecosystem, residences, office space, and recreational areas.

 A larger version of the diagram above can be found here.

Top 5 Urban Planning Fails.