“We are pleased to become part of the East Village community,” said John Ford, a lead engineer with Halsall Associates Limited in Calgary. “We wanted the structure to blend in with the aesthetics of the area yet embody functionality for the surrounding community.” Halsall has been designing innovative and complex structures across Canada for over 50 years and is excited to be part of such an important structure in the city’s civic architecture.

As part of an effort to develop the East Village into a dynamic community that integrates into the downtown core, CMLC commissioned the international contest in September 2009. From 33 initial submissions from major firms across the world, three finalists were chosen to participate in a public presentation and were subject to the opinions of not only the CMLC, but of interested Calgarians.

The pedestrian bridge is 170 meters in length and is split into three arches of 50, 30 and 90 meters in length. The bridge will connect St. Patrick’s Island to the East Village to the south and to the Bow River path system to the north. As the bridge meets St. Patrick’s Island, it becomes a true viewing spot where passers-by can take in the surrounding environment. The bridge may feature animated lighting triggered by motion, making it a truly interactive experience Calgarians can call their own.

The CMLC’s international contest judged both architectural and engineering components of each submission. The CMLC Board of Directors was impressed with the sensibility, aesthetics and thematic approach taken by RFR/Halsall. The arches were particularly remarkable to Calgarians as some saw them mimic a stone skipping across the river while others saw rolling hills or a Chinook arch in the bridge’s profile.

Urbanarbolismo’s eco auditorium is a triangular building that features a leafy living facade facing the street and a sloping green roof up top. The sides are covered in glass to let light into the interior spaces. During the cooler months, sunlight enters the windows and heats the concrete thermal mass inside for passive heating throughout the day. In the warmer months, shades are drawn over the window to protect from the hot sun. A geothermal cooling system plus the green roof keep the interior spaces cool. Additionally, the auditorium is sunken below the street level, which reduces the cooling demand and also helps with the acoustics.

Native vegetation and low-maintenance plants cover the building, which is irrigated with rainwater collected on the roof and stored in reservoirs at the ends of the building. A small patio faces the street with tall trees that help indicate the scale of the building and also provide a more impressive entrance to the auditorium. The main objective of the auditorium “Ciutat d’Elx” is to improve the quality of public space at the neighborhood of Carrús

Himin Solar Energy, started by Huang Ming, the ‘Sun King’ of China, is already the main tenant of Solar Valley and their large office building is completely powered by the sun. He has very ambitious goals about making Solar Valley a reality, and has already attracted about 100 companies, and spawned factories as well as a research center. The hope is that this clean energy epicenter will help propel China’s development of renewable energy technology and installation.

Solar Valley is located just outside of Dezhou, which is making some progress towards in building its reputation as a clean energy city. The city already requires that all new buildings be equipped with solar water heaters of the type made by Huang’s company, and last year they spent $10 million to install solar lighting along miles of road. Chiel Boonstra, a Dutch architect who heads up the International Solar Cities Congress, says that Dezhou “will be a new center of gravity for renewable technologies.” It’s just a shame that rural farmers are being relocated into block apartments in the city to make way for the grand new development.

As plans stand now, the park would stretch from Grand all the way past Alameda and in certain areas it would extend a little on both sides of the 101. The highway would most likely need some upgrades — it would have to be dug a little deeper and an underground parking lot would be added, in hopes of getting people to leave their cars once they get downtown. The master plan also includes development to place some new signature buildings along the park as well as some additional mixed-use development, like retail and residential, to bring more than just business people to the downtown area.

Cost estimates right now are in the $800 million range and the design firm EDW Aecom is working on the rollout plan, which is expected to happen in stages as money becomes available. The first community meeting will be held on Thursday, May 13th from 4-6 pm at the CalTrans District & Building and all are welcome.

Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli, the final design for the center includes some changes from past incarnation, most notably an awesome 5.4 acre green roof and public park that will have an amphitheater for music performances and movie screenings. Downtown SF is getting better and better, now let’s get that HSR line under construction!

Pelli Clarke Pelli presented the final design to the Transbay Joint Powers Authority Board (TJPA) in San Francisco last Thursday. To be located in downtown San Francisco, the new Transit Center will be constructed from steel and glass with a curvilinear exterior inspired the by the sway of tree trunks and their shady canopies. As the facade reaches the roof, it curves in, softening the shadow casted on the street below. Additionally a number of green building strategies were incorporated into the design, including passive solar shading, high performance glazing, geothermal cooling and even wind power.

The highlight of the new transit center, besides all the great public transportation housed under one roof, is the expansive public park on the roof. At 5.4 acres, this park is a great addition of open space to the SF downtown area. City Park will include an amphitheater, a children’s playground, cafes, restaurants, public artworks and a lily pond. Construction starts on the beautiful transit center this August and is expected to be completed in 2017. Come 2017, this may be the best seat in town for a summer concert.

The design reconciles two opposing concepts: 1. BUILDING vs. NATURE and 2. GOVERNMENT vs. CIVIC. By blurring the differences between the built environment and the landscape, people are invited inside and encouraged to inhabit spaces atop and around the structures. This overall design creates a new civic park for the province.

The complex, designed by H Associates and Haeahn Architecture, has recently been selected as a 2010 AIA New York Design Award winning project. Praised by jurors for successfully overcoming “traditional hierarchies that often govern these kind of projects”, the design solution received a Merit Award in the Un-built Work category of the awards program. One of the jury members, Karen Van Lengen, FAIA, also noted that “The jury admired the planning and design direction of the project that suggested a new set of relationships between the government and the people, and between building and site.”

Here’s a project description from H Associates:

BUILDING vs. NATURE – The building form is continuous and horizontal, reflecting the forms of the adjacent mountain landscape. A sinuous green roof connects several buildings and provides a unified outdoor space to accommodate a variety of programs and people. The existing topography of the site and the green axes inform the organic shapes of the buildings, and provide cues that create view corridors extending to the natural scenery surrounding the site.

GOVERNMENT vs. CIVIC – The government and civic spaces are designed to coexist in the same complex, and the building envelope modulates the degree of connectivity between these two systems. The façade is composed of a continuous layer of metal with variably sized perforations. The size of the perforations is directly related to the degree of privacy needed by the program within each space. The result is an additional level of richness in the design and a greater degree of continuity in the complex.

Here’s a detailed project description:

H’s design of a GREEN ENERGY THEME PARK focuses on the integration of landscape with building to create an experiential awareness of the green energy life cycle. This strategy challenges the segregated tower / podium / landscape hierarchy which dominates current office complex typologies. The design inverts the normative scheme to create a polycentric organization with an open civic space at the heart of the site.

The podium mass is divided and dispersed into a series of sloped GREEN ROOFS that integrate with the landscape. This topographical strategy forms valleys that channel light and enhance air circulation while creating pedestrian friendly connections.

Emerging from the sloped landscaped podium is a 29 story tower that contains much of the office program for KEPCO. A HELICAL ATRIUM space extends from the central civic plaza and moves up the tower volume. This atypical atrium promotes building ventilation, natural light, and views.

With the option to be open to the environment or completely sealed, the operable atrium buffers office space form harsh weather conditions as well as naturally ventilates the building during mild weather conditions. For the façade of the tower, each side of the tower is individually designed to accommodate orientation related conditions such as sunlight and wind.

Various sun shading devices are unique on each side of the tower and a north side moss catch system naturally insulates the building. Solar collectors/panels of the building skin system and of the SOLAR FIELD harvest the sun’s energy while daylight sensors and smart control systems reduce energy waste.

Atop of the landscape podium is a field of wind turbines that transforms strong westward winds into energy. The WIND VALLEY between the podium masses captures prevailing winds to circulate air into the open public spaces. This captured wind is collected at the base of the helical atrium and, due to increased pressure and the stack effect, is propelled vertically through the atrium. Water retention systems and green pavement parking prevent excessive runoff and waste.

Rainwater is harvested, filtered, and treated through various features including RAIN FARMS, and the resultant grey water is reused for landscape irrigation and building plumbing. Geothermal systems are integrated into the periphery of the site and the green roofs further insulate the podium mass. The accumulation of these solar, wind, water and geothermal components comprise the GREEN ENERGY THEME PARK where visitors can experience and learn about the production of green energy from various natural energy sources.

The award, created in 2000, celebrates its sixth edition in 2010 and aims to highlight the importance of public space as a catalyst of urban life, and to recognize and foster investment by public administrations in its creation, conservation and improvement, while also understanding the state of public space as a clear indicator of the civic and collective health of our cities.

JOINT WINNER:
Open-Air-Library
Magdeburg (Germany), 2009
DEVELOPER: Department of Building and Construction, Bürgerverein Salbke-Fermersleben-Westerhüsen e.V.
AUTHORS: KARO* with Architektur+Netzwerk
COLLABORATORS: Christian Burckhardt Gregor Schneider Mandy Neuenfeld
AREA: 488 m2
COST: 325,000 €

The residents of a socially depressed neighborhood have organized to collect and share books in an open-air library that they have constructed, after a participative process, with prefabricated pieces from a demolished building.

An unforgettable structure sure to inspire emotion, the ICARUS tower is currently aiming for LEED Platinum certification. The entire surface of the building’s envelope is decked out in a new breed of hyper-efficient solar cells and the roof features a sophisticated rainwater catchment system that will harvest water from the region’s frequent downpours.

The skyscraper is expected to create thousands of new construction jobs, many of which will continue as indentured employment opportunities in the building’s engine room. The skyscraper’s on-site power plant is powered a sophisticated system of levers, pulleys and counterbalances that produce enough human-generated kinetic energy to illuminate the structure’s 100,000,000 LEDs.

Celebrated lead architect Howard Roark describes the structure as “a pearl shining amid the desert sands… a diamond in the rough.” When questioned about the building’s inspiration he states: “Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the people! Your own work, not any possible object of your charity. I’ll be glad if men who need it find a better method of living in the house I built, but that’s not the motive of my work, nor my reason, nor my reward! My reward, my purpose, my life, is the work itself – my work done my way! Nothing else matters to me!”

The development — Libeskind’s first residential showcase in Asia — is a little crazy looking (and not in a good way), but 96% out of Reflections’ 740 already-launched units have been sold. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Libeskind is a well-known starchitect.

It’s hard to imagine a project as awkwardly shaped as Reflections being all that green — think of all the energy and resources that it takes to build all those customized parts needed to make those floppy-looking curved towers, and to make them structurally stable. Reflections does, however, feature one legitimate green credential: it took Singapore’s Green Mark Gold Award by the Building and Construction Authority in 2008, which means that it has achieved significant energy savings. Libeskind’s website also notes, “Lush sky gardens on sloping roof-lines… are linked by sky bridges, providing pockets of open spaces and platforms with 360-degree views of the spectacular surrounds including Resorts World Sentosa and Universal Studios Singapore.”