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Sustainable: The Latest Architecture and News

Competition: Can a Building Clean the Air?

Community Forests International (CFI) is excited to announce its second architectural design competition for the backwoods cabin of the future. The first, hosted in 2014, drew in over 50 entries from 11 different countries and served as a platform for exploring how humans can get back to nature in the 21st century. Bringing together visionary architects, artists, green builders and DIYers, this new challenge addresses the climate crisis and will help transform the organization’s 235 hectare (580 acre) organic farm and forest outside of Sussex, New Brunswick, Canada into a Rural Innovation Campus.

Open Call: International Sustainable Waterfront Design Competition (ISWDC 2016)

We are pleased to announce International Sustainable Waterfront Design Competition (ISWDC 2016). The competition is a partnership and cooperation between universities and design firms. The program is intended to engage students or experienced designers, working individually or in teams to paying more attentions on our waterfront environment with sustainable methods, using renewable resources, offering appropriate technology and construction, improving healthy life styles and working environments. This competition aims to promote the design ability of international students of architecture, landscape or urban planning, and stimulate their enthusiasm and competition sense. We would also like to encourage and train outstanding architects with

o2a’s Proposed Tel Aviv University Building Controls Natural Light and Wind for a Sustainable Solution

o2a Studio has unveiled their proposal for the Lorry I. Lokey School of Management at Tel Aviv University. Part of an invited competition, the design brief required a two-phase proposal sited at the focal point of the Tel Aviv University Campus: an initial 3,500 square metres of classrooms, offices and an auditorium and a future 1,500 square metres of extra classes and offices. Though not selected for the final design of the school, the o2a Studio proposal for the Lorry I. Lokey School of Management encompasses contextual, programmatic and climatic concerns in an elegant solution. Read more about this proposal after the break.

This New Brick by MIT-Researchers Uses Little Energy and Helps Deplete Landfills

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Traditional Red Bricks. Image Courtesy of MIT Tata Center

India has one of the fastest growing populations in the world and to accommodate it, a better building material is needed. Currently over 200 billion of the country’s traditional clay fired bricks are manufactured every year, resulting in numerous pollution and environmental problems. To address these issues, a team from MIT –- composed of students Michael Laracy and Thomas Poinot, along with professors Elsa Olivetti, Hamlin Jennings and John Ochsendorf -- has developed Eco-BLAC bricks: an alternative to traditional bricks that reuses industrial waste and is low-cost and low energy.

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The Shelter Corporation Announces 17th International Architectural Design Competition for Students

Japanese office, The Shelter Corporation, has announced their 17th international architectural ideas competition, open to undergraduate and post-graduate students (as of September 11, 2015) across the world. The Shelter Corporation, which focuses on timber and wood-framed buildings, hosts this competition annually to generate discussion among students on the future of wood and timber construction. Believing in the importance of a sustainable built environment, the firm hopes that this competition can be the gateway for many young architects-to-be to enter the workplace with new ideas.

How the “Moladi” System is Making Affordable Housing More Accessible in South Africa

Design Indaba, in collaboration with the C-City Design Museum in Kerkrade, the Netherlands, has selected Hennie Botes’ “Moladi” for their new exhibit: “Design For A Better World | Innovations For People.” The exhibit aims to raise awareness of the significance of design by selecting projects relevant to current issues worldwide. Based out of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Moladi has provided a solution to the problem of affordable housing since 1986.

Learn more about the construction system and its benefits for affordable housing projects after the break. 

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MenoMenoPiu Proposes a Circular Form for the House of Hungarian Music

Envisioning the House of Hungarian Music as the new center of distribution within Liget Park, MenoMenoPiu Architects proposed a circular form for the concert hall, facilitating circulation to and from the museum and within the park. Although not the final winner of the Liget-Budapest Competition, “The Circle” demonstrates an interesting organizational strategy and perspective on sound.

MenoMenoPiu Proposes a Circular Form for the House of Hungarian Music - Music Venue, Stairs, Arch, Chair, BenchMenoMenoPiu Proposes a Circular Form for the House of Hungarian Music - Music Venue, Facade, CityscapeMenoMenoPiu Proposes a Circular Form for the House of Hungarian Music - Music Venue, Garden, Facade, Arcade, Column, ArchMenoMenoPiu Proposes a Circular Form for the House of Hungarian Music - Music Venue, FacadeMenoMenoPiu Proposes a Circular Form for the House of Hungarian Music - More Images+ 9

Bamboom: Elora Hardy's TED Talk on Bamboo's Exploding Popularity

Perhaps the most surprising thing about bamboo - besides being an entirely natural, sustainable material with the tensile strength of steel that can grow up to 900 millimeters (3 feet) in just 24 hours - is that it's not more widely recognized as a fantastic construction material. Like many traditional building materials, bamboo no longer has the architectural currency that it once did across Asia and the pacific, but the efforts of Elora Hardy may help put it back into the vernacular. Heading up Ibuku, a design firm that uses bamboo almost exclusively, Hardy's recent TED Talk is an excellent run through of bamboo's graces and virtues in construction, showing off sinuous private homes and handbuilt school buildings.

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House B10 / Werner Sobek Group

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Stuttgart, Germany

How Simple Earth Blocks Could Revolutionize Construction for the African Island of Pemba

Pemba, a small Tanzanian island off of Africa's Eastern coast, is undergoing something of a construction boom. With half of the population aged under 30 and a culture in which a man must build a house before he can get married, a wave of new informal housing is sweeping the island. Historically, construction methods used by the islanders have been problematic: traditional wattle & daub construction typically survives for just 5-7 years; its replacement, bricks made of coral, not only require large amounts of energy to extract but have a devastating effect on the environment; and modern cement bricks most be imported at high costs.

Sensing an opportunity to help the islanders at a critical time in their development, Canadian NGO Community Forests International is promoting a solution that combines the economy and sustainability of wattle & daub with the durability of masonry: Interlocking Stabilized Compressed Earth Blocks (ISCEBs). Find out how this simple technology can help the island community after the break.

A House Named Fred / in situ studio

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Orange County, United States
  • Architects: in situ studio
  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  2369 ft²
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2013

This Temporary Treetop Hotel Lets You Sleep "With the Birds"

Chinese architecture firm Penda, known for their ecologically sensitive designs, has redesigned the tent in a bold new way for the AIM "Legend Of The Tent" Competition. Their proposal, ”One With The Birds," is a flexible and sustainable structure that integrates sleeping pods into the forest canopy. Inspired by Native American Tipis, which are moveable and reusable, the structure, made from bamboo sticks latched together with rope, leaves no impact on the site nor causes any harm to the bamboo itself.

A mock-up of the project will soon be installed as a temporary hotel. According to the architects, “after the temporary hotel is deconstructed, the materials can be reused as scaffolding on a construction site or reused as another temporary hotel on a different location.”

Learn more about this remarkable structure, after the break.

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Sustainable Design-Build Projects from Seven Universities Around the World

Interdisciplinary teams from the University of Sao Paulo, Delft University, and five other post-secondary institutions are currently exploring sustainable innovations in design, materials, and building systems thanks to the support of Pillars of Sustainable Education – a partnership between Architecture for Humanity and the Alcoa Foundation. The collaborative effort was founded as a way to “educate the next generation of architects, engineers, and material designers while supporting real-world design-build projects that positively impact both the environment and the local community.” Months into the project, the schools’ proposals are turning into reality as students collaborate with NGOs. To learn about what each school is working on, keep reading after the break.

Architects to Relocate Entire City Two Miles Over

UPDATE: The BBC reports that construction on the Kiruna re-location is scheduled to begin next month. For more on this extraordinary project, read the article below.

Everyone is familiar with the stresses of moving to a new house, but the residents of Kiruna, a small town of 18,000 in Sweden, face a more daunting task: moving their entire city.

For more than 100 years, residents of Kiruna have developed their city center around the world's largest iron mine, operated by the state-controlled company, Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB (LKAB). In 2004, LKAB determined that to continue extracting iron would mean digging deeper, unsettling the ground beneath 3,000 homes as well as the city hall, train station, and century-old church.

UrbanEden / UNC Charlotte

The people have spoken: UNC Charlotte’s 2013 Solar Decathlon entry, UrbanEden has won the “People’s Choice Award.” Designed as an urban infill project for a couple in Charlotte, North Carolina, the net-zero solar-powered home defines itself by establishing a strong indoor and outdoor connection in the middle of the city. By enclosing the back deck with a seven-foot tall vertical garden and integrating a high-performance glass wall along the home’s south side, dwellers are presented with the unlikely option of privately enjoying the outdoors within a dense urban context.

Urban Mountain / schmidt hammer lassen architects + Vugge til Vugge Denmark + LOOP Architects + COWI Denmark + COWI Norway + Transsolar Energitechnik GmbH

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, together with LOOP Architects, COWI Denmark and Norway, Transsolar Energitechnik and Vugge til Vugge Denmark, has won the Nordic Build Challenge in Norway with their innovative scheme, Urban Mountain. The winning proposal, which would be Norway's tallest building, seeks to refurbish and extend an existing 50,000 square-meter office tower in central Oslo into 79,000 square-meter sustainable icon. Not only would the building be the first Norwegian high-rise to utilize natural ventilation, but the design would employ Cradle to Cradle principles and BREEAM Outstanding certification targets to significantly reduce the building’s energy consumption and CO2 footprint.

Continue reading to learn more...

Are LEED Skyscrapers Our Biggest Energy Hogs?

In an excellent article for The New Republic, Sam Roudman brilliantly tackles many of the same, timely issues as Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros in "Why Green Architecture Hardly Ever Deserves the Name." Roudman unpacks the loop-holes of LEED, most notably how it ignores a building's intended use, which often make a building anything but sustainable at all. Read the whole article at The New Republic.

Why Green Architecture Hardly Ever Deserves the Name

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7 World Trade Center / SOM. Image © Ruggero Vanni.

The following article, by Michael Mehaffy & Nikos Salingaros, originally appeared in Metropolis Mag as "Why Green Often Isn't"

Something surprising has happened with many so-called “sustainable” buildings. When actually measured in post-occupancy assessments, they’ve proven far less sustainable than their proponents have claimed. In some cases they’ve actually performed worse than much older buildings, with no such claims. A 2009 New York Times article, “Some buildings not living up to green label,” documented the extensive problems with many sustainability icons. Among other reasons for this failing, the Times pointed to the widespread use of expansive curtain-wall glass assemblies and large, “deep-plan” designs that put most usable space far from exterior walls, forcing greater reliance on artificial light and ventilation systems.

Partly in response to the bad press, the City of New York instituted a new law requiring disclosure of actual performance for many buildings. That led to reports of even more poor-performing sustainability icons. Another Times article, “City’s Law Tracking Energy Use Yields Some Surprises,” noted that the gleaming new 7 World Trade Center, LEED Gold-certified, scored just 74 on the Energy Star rating — one point below the minimum 75 for “high-efficiency buildings” under the national rating system. That modest rating doesn’t even factor in the significant embodied energy in the new materials of 7 World Trade Center.

What's going on with these supposedly "sustainable" buildings? Read on, after the break...