On our road to a cleaner world, green architecture plays an important role and now we can be proud of the first LEED certified parking garage in the United States. The Santa Monica Civic Center exceeds a big part of the LEED guidelines with the help of the solar photovoltaic array on the roof. Also, the construction materials used for the parking structure were recycled and they are completed with low-VOC paints.

Read more »

The first LEED Gold certified art museum has been completed and this was possible thanks to a $60 million funding. The construction is the Grand Rapids Art Museum which was expanded and now it features about 125,000 square foot. This is about three times larger than the original structure.

Read more »

John Berg’s Highway House is said to be a ‘Single Family Residence with Environmentally Low Impact Building Technology’. His company, Berg Design, founded in 2001, designed a house that carefully approaches the environmental aspects and still manages to offer its residents all the modern features of technology.

The construction was inspired by a barn from Long Island built in the 1800’s and assembles together concrete blocks, western cedar siding and glass. It also uses Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS) complemented by radiant concrete floors, a 98% efficient boiler and a geo-thermal HVAC system.

The roof is constructed with UV-resistant Kynar and a saline pool (no chemicals there) placed in front of the house completes the classical design of a modern eco-tech house.

Via

Yes, you read correctly, the homeless are serving us an example on how to live. Nobody imagined a future where we would all be living in cardboard houses, until now. The concept designed by Cardboard Box House is seen as a genuine temporary housing possibility.

Demands on resources are very limited, because 85% of its materials consist of recycled paper, that can be recycled and used again and again. You might think that it would fell off at the first breeze, but things aren’t what they seem.

The Cardboard Box House is strong and water proof and can be easily built. Two people can assemble the kit in an afternoon. Manufacturers set the price somewhere around $32,000 and it has the advantage of mobility.

Via

A new super structure is going to be built in Chicago and along with it’s futuristic design and big size, it will be very efficient and environmental-friendly. The Clean Technology Tower will capture wind using turbines positioned at it’s corners. The wind accelerates around the tower, so the turbines will have an increased efficiency.

On the roof it will be placed a double cavity to direct the wind, that reaches a maximum speed to an array of wind turbines to generate power. Also the ventilation is made by the negative pressure created by the turbine, to take advantage of everything and decrease as much as possible the non-renewable-power consumption. Also the roof is covered with solar cells and captures the solar rays.

The huge building includes a 300,000 square foot hotel, 1.8 million square feet of office space, a street-level retail and a spa. It was designed by the company that also designed the Masdar Headquarters, Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill.

via MetaEfficient

Architect Kieran Timberlake is known for his ecological concerns when designing houses and recently he found a way to create even more of those. He met Steve Glenn, which owns the Living Homes, a company centered on commissioning and building green prefabs. The two sealed a partnership to design a new series of sustainable, versatile, and modern prefabs that would make green living classy and quite affordable.

Their experience gave birth to three concepts: the KT1 Expandable Single Family Residence, the LivingHomes Building System (LBS) and the LivingHomes KT2 Townhouse. You can enjoy pictures of the resulted structures in the gallery below.

Via

Lower Mill Estate is supposed to be a collection of modern eco-homes near seven lakes from Gloucestershire, England. They were designed by over 22 skilled architects and are a complex of 48 houses that are said to combine natural settings with modern facilities inside them.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but as far as I can see from these photos, they are right at the water level, so all the creatures living in the lake habitat will be surrounding them. Although the buildings have nice designs, this means that if you can endure the plash smell, rats, frogs and snakes walking and crawling through your bedroom and occasional floodings, then this is the house for you…

Via

New York is one of the world’s city with the most impressive architectural designs and also their latest design is environmental friendly. The under-construction green building was designed by Neil M. Denari Architects and it’s located in West side Manhattan in the Chelsea art gallery district.

The green structure will be called High Line 23 and it will feature 14-stories of gallery space, residences and penthouse at the top floor. The uncanny design of the building has made its architects to “chase” the LEED Gold certification for HL23. The green part consists of natural ventilation, low VOC interior materials, energy efficiency, natural illumination, water preserved fixtures and we should praise the recycled materials that will help to the construction.

The High Line 23 will have a total space of 39,000 square feet, it will cost about $22 million and is scheduled for completion in the last quarter of 2009.

Nowadays one of the best ideas for design and architecture are inspired from “greenery”. The mankind has realized that we have no choice than to start building structures that are environmental-friendly. If you were thinking that it will be hard to bring cool ideas you were wrong because green could provide cool and futuristic features.

Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture came up with the Passive Houses which they will unveil them at the Hem&Villa fair in Malmo, Sweden. These houses are made of massive walls meant to keep warm and windows that will distribute the heat all around the house. This technique was inspired from the native Americans who used it a few centuries ago.

The house that we bring you today was called Villa Atrium and it consists of a donut-like building and in the yard you will find a beautiful tree. The design of the Passive Homes combines the old with the modern in a very nice way and I expect them to become very popular among the house-builders.

London is the home of a structure with an astonishing design which is called Palestra. This building was developed by Alsop Architects and $120 million were necessary to finish the construction. At the beginning, the Palestra was destined to be the home of multiple companies but in the end only two settled there - the London Development Agency and the London Climate Change Agency.

The construction was finished in 2006 but six weeks after the unveiling, one of its component crashed and the wind turbines that were powering the building stopped working properly. The wind turbines are scheduled for replacement in the coming weeks and the designers are looking to implement fuel cell technology in order to power the entire building with renewable energy. I don’t know about you but I fell in love with this glass structure and you might do the same if you check out the gallery below.

Via EcoFuss