Architectural Competition | Student and Elderly Housing | Eco-Loop | Jyvaskyla, Finland | Buro Koray Doman

Eco-loop is a super-structure that blurs the boundaries between building/ landscape, figure/ ground, and production/ consumption to create an ecosystem that is greater than sum of its parts. The ground lifts up to create a continuous occupiable roofscape that runs through the site with green roof structures, edible gardens, a walkway and bike path. The slope provides direct access to each floor from outside. A combination of single student units and senior units are located in each floor. The ground floor is dedicated for a Co-op for local produce and the crops of edible-park above, a restaurant also served by the greenhouses on the south site, and commercial and social areas on the north site. The entire proposal creates a self-sustaining eco-system with positive financial cultural and ecological impacts.....more

Multi Residential Housing | McNab Avenue Development Site | Footscray | Victoria | Australia | BKK

BKK are the lead consultant in the Grocon team appointed by Places Victoria (VicUrban) to develop the McNab Avenue Development Site, part of the Footscray Central Activities District. BKK’s initial role was to develop the overall site masterplan. This role has been expanded to include the design of Building 3 and the surrounding sub-precinct which includes a diverse range of community based programmes such as community kitchen, community gallery, retail spaces, childcare centre, gymnasium and flexible WOHO apartment spaces.......more

Architectural Desugn Competition | Environment of Contemporary Architecture | Russian Organic City | Schiavello Architects Office

The platform of “Russia-Organic city” symbolizes the cultural and historical origins of Russia in a way that shows the relationship between the future and the past, between the sacred and the profane. Towers have always been a much loved feature of Russian architecture skyscrapers such as Kremlin, Lomonosov University and hotel Ucrainia where built with pointed tops, or inflated vertical turrets which gave an exotic air to the buildings associated with the Russian upper middle classes (the “Litejnij prospekt” or the “Petrogradskaja Storona”). These turrets had different uses they could house private chapels or simply be used as additional rooms in houses of the well-to-do..........more

Herman's Square office and residential building | Celje | Slovenia | Enota

The new business residential building is located at an important location in the old city centre in Celje. The land intended for construction is a part of a larger degraded non-built up area, which was somewhat forgotten for decades and exempt from the development of the city. Through the years a very heterogeneous structure evolved around this "wound" in the urban tissue, which was untouched for a long time. Even though according to urban regulations, the location is a part of the narrow city centre, it is not directly adjacent to any historical buildings.........more

The Housing+ | Nørre Sundby | Aalborg | C. F. Møller Architects

The Housing+ concept sets the ambitious target of a zero-energy housing scheme, which also includes the tenant’s primary household energy consumption. The complex will thus be 100% relying on renewables.
The 60 units take the form of a sloped volume, from 12 to 4 storeys, creating a large south-facing roof-plane, ideal for solar energy, and just the right size to supply the housing units. This optimized shape also creates a landmark silhouette, prominently positioned between Aalborg’s bridges.......more

Residential Development | Heliopolis Club | Pune | India | Planet 3 Studio

Breaking free of standard issue orthogonal floor plans, this premium residential development in Pune combines the best of cutting edge structural engineering and future-forward contemporary styling. With massive cantilevered blocks anchored to a steel structural frame, sky-gardens at multiple levels, panoramic 360 degree views from all apartments and intelligent embedded technologies, this development raises the bar for such buildings worldwide. Province, Banglore.....more

Cellscape | 100 houses and an eco-farm | Doepel Strijkers Architects

In the Netherlands, 95% of all urbanites with relocation plans desire to move to out of the city, to green open areas. Holland is renowned for having the highest density of road infrastructure in the world, and due to it�s relatively small size, urban sprawl facilitated by the car, is consuming the landscape. This creates a paradoxical situation, on the one hand the desire to densify the rural landscape, on the other, to keep the open, green quality intact. .....more

Korean National Housing Corporation | Doepel Strijkers Architects,

On a prominent site in a new development in Jeonju, this headquarter building is built-up out of two components, an office building of 22.000m2 and a cultural building of 8.000m2. The typical typology for this programmatic combination would be a plinth containing the cultural program with an office tower above it. By fusing the two volumes, the cultural program flows up into the office program, meeting around the fourth floor where the shared facilities are situated.....more

Urban development Nya Årstafältet Stockholm By Erik Giudice Architect

Nya Årstafältet is part of Stockholm’s ambition to create a organic city structure in it’s southern parts and to establish new urban centralities. The project will become one of Stockholm’s largest new developments in the coming years.

The core of the project is the new landscape park of more than 50 hectares which will combine activity fields, playgrounds, allotments and botanical gardens. The park is linked to one of Stockholm’s green corridors and will contribute to local biodiversity.

On the north and the western side of the park two large decks concentrate playgrounds and leisure activities, creating a spectacular transition between the park and the buildings.

The project connects the existing neighborhoods and infrastructures with the aim to create urban continuity and suppress both social and physical barriers. The robust and flexible city structure with its folded geometry gives a specific identity to the layout and creates a great variation in the cityscape and in public spaces.

The new city blocks combine a wide diversity of typologies, scales and heights in order to respond to the needs of a contemporary evolving society. Towards the park, higher buildings create a contrasted and airy skyline, letting light and views pass through to the buildings standing behind.

The project carries a high ecological and social profile, that meets up with the city’s global ambition which has resulted in the nomination of Stockholm to Green Capital 2010. .....more
Site
Årstafältet, Stockholm

Program
New city development : housing, offices, services, public buildings and a large central park.

Dimensions
New neighborhoods 30 ha

Landscape park 50 ha

Vanke's Valley Housing | Shenzen | China | RAU

start: 2008
gross floor area: 48.000 m2
location: Shenzen
function: luxury residences in nature reserve
performance: net zero energy residences

On the intercession of the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, RAU is advising a multi-billion Chinese developer on a project that would place 120 homes within a crucial water extraction area inhabited by protected species in an ecologically responsible and energy-neutral manner.

Shenzhen is just north of Hong Kong. After Shanghai, it is the busiest port in China and has grown over the last 30 years from a sleepy fishing village to a high-tech financial centre in tropical southern China. To the north of the city is a river basin landscape. Evacuated since 1998, it has a rich biodiversity and is crucial as a supply of drinking water for the local population.

China Vanke Co., Ltd., a listed company for 18 years, is the largest housing developer in China. As of 2007, this company managed 31 million m² of land (11 million of which was already residential area) and had another 42 million in the pipeline. Vanke has an agreement with the local government to build 120 homes over this extremely vulnerable valley.

The solution was pole houses: pre-fab houses on a concrete platform (the basic construction site) floating on a single pole above the landscape. Tilted to provide their own shade, they are also cooled naturally by an updraft provided by a patio. Their ‘green’ roofs are covered with vegetation and solar panels. Accessed by a single road under which water and fauna can move with no obstructions, this plan minimises the loss of crucial vegetation both during construction and in use.....more

MILANOFIORI 2000 | Milan | ARCHEA Associati

LOCATION: Milano Italia
PROJECT: residential - commercial
CLIENT: Milanofiori 2000 S.r.l.
STRUCTURES: Intertecno
SYSTEMS:Intertecno
PLAN:2007
REALISATION:under construction
COST:€ 29.000.000,00
BUILT AREA: 24.848 sq m

The design of a building in the centre of the Milanofiori 2000 area is based on the indications of the master plan prepared by EEA Architects, in which a selection of Italian firms have been asked to participate. The complexity of the project lies in the particular conditions of the plot which is “embedded” between the high level of the artificial ground – which covers the parking areas below, thus creating the new central urban square – and the lower level of the park. The building also acts as backdrop, barrier between the residential area and the shopping area and takes the form of a tall urban front capable of collecting and containing the visual sphere of the public space and the collective life. The density and overall volume of the project is therefore “necessary” even if it proves to be decidedly problematic due to the proportions and overall dimensions. This difficulty has been interpreted as a key of interpretation of the project, which has been re-modulated and “scaled” through a subdivision into two lower units, one with three floors and another with six, superimposed but somewhat shifted. The building is consequently coherent with the tall office blocks with ten or eleven floors designed by Van Egeraat, while the fragmentation make the building reacquire, architecturally speaking, a dimension that is more proportionate to the park and the buildings in front of it......more

Housing Proposal | Plug Out ,Lower Manhattan,New York By Workac

This proposal was commissioned by New York’s Downtown Alliance to generate ideas for an underused site in Lower Manhattan. WORKac proposed a series of experimental new housing typologies, stacked in a 45-story building. Each housing type is expressed as an independent section, rotated around the building’s core to take full advantage of sunlight and views. Each section’s rooftop is a different ecosystem.

The concept of the “Plug-Out” is that a single building can provide the necessary ecological infrastructure for a neighborhood, allowing it to “plug out” from the city grid and performing what we call “urban dialysis” filtering and cleaning water and providing energy which is then fed back into the surrounding district. The tower’s core, linking the various sections with structure and vertical transportation, provides this infrastructure. The core is divided into waste and water systems moving down one side and heat-producing systems moving up the other, criss-crossing at points to generate public programs.

On the water/waste side, rainwater is harvested for toilets, irrigation, hydroponic farming, laundry, & fish farming. Grey water is cleaned in the Grey Water Wetland and reused in toilets and irrigation. Black water is cleaned and recycled in a treatment facility to be moved back up the tower into the energy systems. Heat and energy are created via composting, a “waste to power incinerator”, geothermal heating, solar powered facades, traffic wind turbines and a co-generation plant to create public baths, a hot yoga center and warmed earth for urban camping. At the top of the building is the Eco-Research school, PS 2030 (in honor of the mayor’s PlaNYC 2030).....more at Workac

Unbuilt Work By OFL | ENOKI ROME ECO CITY

Location: Everywhere
Client: Private
Phase: Research
Area: 10.000 sqm
Construction budget: Unknown
Year: 2010
Design team: Francesco Lipari

Enoki rome ecocity is a project born from the desire of investigate the possibilities for future housing. The achievements in material science, energy conservation, aerodynamic and environmental solutions allow designers to experience new housing typologies that can be housed in self sufficient and highly innovative building envelopes. Paying homage to the new millennium and to the city of Rome with the intention of stimulating and supporting the contemporary city. The Enoki project is installed above the actual city of Rome and it integrates itself with the historical part of the city. It draws its’ lifeblood from parks, green areas and water courses to push itself upward. They are small self-contained cities with residences, commercial spaces, green areas, spaces for community activities, sport and cultural activities. The outer skin, made with steel diamond-shaped panels, appropriately follows the main cellular structure of the enoki made from steel and glass and having a molecular shape. A thermoformed glass surface provides a lucid and static resistance with the possibility of infinite curvatures with lower costs.

The Enoki project consists of 150 stories. The classic lifts are replaced by flying shuttles that run outside the enoki bringing inhabitants to and from different levels of the building and the old city. Enoki can accommodate up to 6,000 residents with an area of 240,000 square meters and 300,000 square meters for recreational activities for the "new city"....visit OFL for more