One Bangkok will provide retail, hotels, offices, as well as homes for 60,000 people. Image Courtesy of SOM via Atchain
Chicago-based Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) has unveiled plans for One Bangkok, a new 16Ha mixed-use development in the heart of Bangkok, Thailand. Working in collaboration with architects, engineers, sustainability experts and landscape architects, both local and international, SOM seeks to create the single largest private-sector development in Thailand to date - a vertical village providing homes and places of work for an estimated 60,000 people. Through One Bangkok, SOM challenged themselves to translate the vibrancy and energy of Bangkok's neighborhoods into a vertical environment, whilst promoting a 'sense of place' and district-level sustainability.
https://www.archdaily.com/868967/vertical-village-som-leads-design-of-major-mixed-use-district-in-bangkokNiall Patrick Walsh
Symantec HQ - The building features a blend of natural materials, bold colouring, and branding. Image Courtesy of Little
Architecture continually evolves to meet societal demands. Recently, a global effort to tackle climate change, and to achieve optimum energy efficiency in buildings, has brought standards such as BREEAM and LEED to the fore. However, as scientific analysis and awareness of human mental health has increased, architects are once again required to place humans at the centre of the design process. This growing trend has led to the development of WELL Building Certification – considered the world’s first certification focused exclusively on human health and wellbeing.
The University of California, Irvine has selected LMN Architects and Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction to design and build a new $46 million classroom and office building project. In the campus’s central greenspace, the new 70,000-square-foot building will promote diversity, group learning, and social interaction.
LMN’s creative approach of unlocking the site and rearranging the program led to a bold design solution that enhances the overall experience for both students and faculty, said UCI Campus Architect Brian Pratt, LEED AP. We are delighted with the results.
There is a dichotomy to the business of educating architects. While the real world profession is a collaborative field, one in which projects of even the largest and most publicly-acclaimed offices are team-led initiatives, the study of architecture is often insular, myopic, and devoid of such partnerships. Certainly there is a benefit to this style of teaching - it builds confidence for one thing - but it is troubling to think that in a socially-oriented and practically-minded field like architecture, there can be such major disconnects between the process of designing and the act of building. As many critics of current architectural education have pointed out, incorporating design-build projects into school curriculums is a pragmatic solution oriented towards correcting such imbalances.
The fact that more schools don't have programs for students to both design and build their projects is especially perplexing when most universities, particularly those located in the United States, are in such a prolonged period of institutional and budgetary expansion. With many schools now governed like corporate entities, it’s surprising that architecture programs and students are not treated like in-house resources. Why aren’t architecture students treated like assets, the same way that student doctors and nurses are brought into university led medical facilities or scientists into campus research labs?
In early April 2015, the New York Times reported on Leonardo DiCaprio’s recent purchase of Blackadore Caye, a small island off the coast of Belize that has faced significant environmental degradation and erosion. A patron of several environmental projects, DiCaprio is partnering with Paul Scialla, CEO of the Delos real estate and wellness platform, to create an eco-resort intended to serve as the latest model of cutting-edge, environmentally-responsible tourism development. The development plans include a row of floating guest suites built over the water, 48 private villas (ringing in at $5-15 million), human health and anti-aging wellness programs, and a conservation area. The project is advertised as meeting the ambitious green building standards of the Living Building Challenge and the WELL Building Standard®.
Many Times readers in the comments section sardonically noted that the private jets and the shipment of building materials and daily resources for island development come with large environmental and social price tags that far outweigh the conservation efforts associated with the resort. On the other hand, a few commentators pointed out that the development will employ local labor and save the island from complete degradation. The discussion surrounding the pros and cons of “eco-tourism” development is not a new one, and not one that is easily settled.
But beyond the (important) discussion of the impacts of eco-tourism, the development raises questions about the emergence of alternative green building market standards, which ostensibly aim to transform the building industry by setting measurable targets for the environmental and social effects of the places we live and work.
Steven Holl Architects has unveiled their design for a new public library and museum in a developing area of Shenzhen, China. With the goal of creating a public space with two buildings connected below the plaza level, the massing concept is based on a three-part removal. While the design did win the most votes from the jury in the overall competition, city officials chose a different scheme to continue with.
Construction of Santiago Calatrava’sMuseu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow) in Rio de Janeiro is underway and on-track to be completed in the second half of 2015. Located on the Pier Mauá, the museum will encompass a 15,000m2 built area and include gardens, leisure areas, bike paths, and a reflective pool, totaling over 30,000m2. The ground floor of the museum will include a store, auditorium, temporary exhibit rooms, a restaurant, administrative offices and space for research and educational activities. The upper floor, connected to the ground floor with ramps, will include long-term exhibits, a café and a panoramic lookout.
ELEMENTAL's Quinta Monroy Housing. Image Courtesy of ELEMENTAL
In recent years, the architecture world has seen a significant surge of interest in socially-conscious design; from sustainability to social housing, and from public space to disaster relief, architecture is beginning to take on some of the biggest humanitarian challenges of our era. But despite its popularity, public-interest design is still only a fringe activity in architecture, either bolted on to existing design or only practiced by a select group of people. In this short article originally published by Metropolis Magazine, Metropolis Editor-in-Chief Susan Szenasy makes the case that rather than working on the periphery, "the drive to improve living conditions for all life should be at the center of contemporary architecture and design."
On a bright April weekend, a group of committed, passionate, accomplished designers and their collaborators from the Americas and elsewhere gathered in downtown Detroit to speak about socially responsible design. It was the 15th annual Structures for Inclusion conference. The convener, Bryan Bell, is the architect behind the nonprofit organization Design Corps, and the spirit behind the SEED (Social Economic Environmental Design) rating program.
The Living Building Challenge will now fulfill the energy and water requirements for LEED. As the U.S. Green Building Council announced, this marks an important step in the USGBC's mission to make LEED an accessible platform that complements other construction rating systems.
The USGBC's decision essentially equates the two systems in the fields of water and energy efficiency, recognizing projects that meet the Living Building Challenge's standards within these areas as equivalent to LEED standards. By doing so, it encourages a spirit of collaboration toward sustainable goals across competing rating systems.
Stockholm-based practice Utopia Arkitekter has been selected to design a new travel centre in Uppsala after their "sculptural, eye-catching jewel of a building" won the municipal design contest. Featuring a travel centre, fitness centre and restaurant on the lower floors and offices in the floors above, the building aims for LEED Platinum certification. The design revolves around the incorporation of bicycles, providing commuters with extensive bicycle parking facilities as well as changing room and shower facilities for a convenient transfer from bicycle to train.
The LEED rating systems were a great idea in the beginning, but they have become a symbol of all that is wrong with green building today. Getting a LEED rating is slow, difficult, and expensive, and the rating is skewed heavily to Gizmo Green solutions that are completely ignorant of where the building is being built, and for whom. We need the opposite sort of system today: one that is intelligent about where a building is built and who it’s being built for, and that is fast, friendly, and free so that anyone can use it.
Originally published by Metropolis Magazine, this comprehensive analysis by sustainability expert Lance Hosey examines the current disputes within the green building industry, where market leader LEED currently finds competition from the Living Building Challenge, aiming for the "leading edge" of the market, and the Green Globes at the other end of the scale. Arguing for a more holistic understanding of what makes materials sustainable, Hosey examines the role that materials, and material industries such as the timber and chemical industries, can have in directing the aims and principles of these three sustainability rating systems - for better or for worse.
Material Minds, presented by ArchDaily Materials, is our new series of short interviews with architects, designers, scientists, and others who use architectural materials in innovative ways. Enjoy!
Arthur Andersson of Andersson-Wise Architects wants to build ruins. He wants things to be timeless - to look good now and 2000 years from now. He wants buildings to fit within a place and time. To do that he has a various set of philosophies, processes and some great influences. Read our full in-depth interview with Mr. Andersson, another revolutionary "Material Mind," after the break.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), with its advantages and disadvantages, has dominated the green building certification market for a long time. But now alternatives - like the GBI's Green Globes, the Living Building Challenge, and Build It Green – are beginning to emerge. So how does a competitor like Green Globes shape up in comparison to LEED? And what does this developing competition mean for green rating systems in general? To learn more, keep reading after the break.
Have you ever wondered if you would be happier working in a LEED building? Wonder no more - a new study says no. Although the findings indicate employees are generally satisfied with working in green-certified buildings, they are no happier than they would be in a non-LEED building. The study, which contradicts previous findings, was conducted by Sergio Altomonte from the Department for Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Nottingham and Stefano Schiavon from the Center for the Built Environment at the University of California Berkeley.
To arrive at this conclusion, data was collected through a web-based survey tool by the Center for the Built Environment (CBE) at the University of California Berkeley. In total, 65 LEED and 79 non-LEED buildings were selected to participate in the study. Building occupants were surveyed and asked to rate their satisfaction on a 7-point scale of 17 indoor environmental quality parameters, including amount of light, furniture adjustability, air quality, temperature, and sound privacy.
At the annual Greenbuild International Conference in Philadelphia last week, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) finally announced the latest version of LEED. Aiming to make a larger forward step than previous versions, LEED v4 is described by Rick Fedrizzi, the CEO and president of USGBC as a "quantum leap". But what are the key changes in the new LEED criteria, and what effect will they have? Furthermore, what problems have they yet to address? Read on to find out.
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_Atchain_(2).jpg?1491918884 "One Bangkok will provide retail, hotels, offices, as well as homes for 60,000 people. Image Courtesy of SOM via Atchain")
_Atchain_(3).jpg?1491918690 "Situated adjacent to Lumphini Park, the scheme offers 8Ha of public space. Image Courtesy of SOM via Atchain")
_Atchain_(4).jpg?1491918823 "Streetscapes, public plazas and greenspaces all contribute to a welcoming sense of place. Image Courtesy of SOM via Atchain")
_Atchain_(1).jpg?1491918919 "A variety of towers will feature individual identities such as green terraces and sky gardens. Image Courtesy of SOM via Atchain")
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.jpg?1417362660 "Section. Image Courtesy of Utopia Arkitekter")
