Embodied Carbon: The Latest Architecture and News

“Constitution Gardens will become a biodiversity hotspot on the National Mall,” said Adam Greenspan, FASLA, design partner at PWP Landscape Architecture. “We will create a garden, based in nature, while respecting the historic design.” Constitution Gardens in Washington, D.C. opened in 1976 to commemorate the bicentennial of the American revolution. Concepts outlined in the McMillan Plan and designs by Dan Kiley and SOM shaped the landscape.

But over the past forty years, the gardens fell into disrepair and became a pass-through site on the way to other more popular destinations on the mall. Now, the second phase of a three-phase plan to revitalize the garden has been approved by the Commission of Fine Arts and National Capital Planning Commission. The design by PWP Landscape Architecture and Rogers Partners Architects will create a “new ecological landscape” designed for people and hundreds of plant and animal species.

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UNStudio, in collaboration with local partner HYP Architects, has won the competition for the design of the Kyklos building in Luxembourg. The project is part of Beval, a large-scale redevelopment initiative aiming to transform a former industrial site into an urban center complete with a university and technological center, in addition to residential, office, and retail spaces. When designing the Kyklos building, which will occupy a central position in the district's main square, the architects set out to find solutions to create the smallest carbon footprint for both operational and embedded metrics.