Tuesday, June 19, 2012

River gyms and stackable cars: The future for sustainable design


Speaking about the Future of Sustainable Design, Joachim and Chicago architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill painted a dramatically innovative and greener future.
“We’re looking at a more holistic, pluralistic approach,” said Gill, speaking after the event. The Chicago partnership of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture is doing just that.
In a planned retrofit of Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower), the partners propose to reduce electricity use by 80 percent, the equivalent of 68 million kilowatt hours or 150,000 barrels of oil per year.
Smith and Gill presented a string of similarly mind-boggling statistics throughout a half-hour lecture that covered wind-farms built into high-rises, self-insulated structures that operate like thermos bottles to eliminate air conditioning and green roofs.
Their Chicago Central Area De-Carbonization Plan even proposes to create an emission-free downtown by 2030.
Smith said that when people think of climate change, they don’t realize that buildings contribute a whopping 50 percent of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, beating out the more commonly-conceived villain: vehicles.

read more
 
Willis Tower(tallest building in North America) Willis Tower Willis Tower Willis Tower, Chicago



more about architecture:

Architecture: Domes Throughout History- Domes of the Past, Present and Future

The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper (Book Review)

Will Chicago finally get a new supertall skyscraper?

A new architectural landmark in Barcelona: Torre Telefónica Diagonal ZeroZero by EMBA

The Multicultural City and the Politics of Religious Architecture: Urban Planning, Mosques and Meaning-making in Birmingham, UK

Print Reading for Architecture & Construction

On Architecture: Collected Reflections On A Century Of Change


Digital Drawing For Landscape Architecture: Contemporary Techniques And Tools For Digital Representation In Site Design


Vernacular Architecture And Regional Design: Cultural Process And Environmental Response

No comments:

Post a Comment