Designed by Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture, 505 Church Street in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, is going to be one of the most energy-efficient and sustainable mixed-use buildings in the world. This 605-feet-tall, 1.2 million-square-foot building is designed to achieve LEED Platinum rating and attracts tenants in search for high-performance, technologically advanced commercial, hotel and conference space with lowest energy costs and environmental impact. The design meets the aggressive energy use intensity goals of the 2030 Challenge – an internationally recognized challenge for architecture practices to design more energy efficient buildings in order to minimize energy consumption, moving towards zero fossil fuel usage by the year 2030.

Unique form of the building, environmentally strategic site orientation, along with double-skin façade, integrated photo voltaic panels, solar shading, under-floor air distribution, sky-gardens and wide range of cutting-edge building systems are working in synergy, ensuring great energy savings and one of the most technologically advanced building experiences.

The double skin of the high-rise, on the southwest façade, features internally ventilated cavity, which captures solar heat in warm months and exhausts it up and out of the building, reducing cooling loads for the interior and vice versa – in cold months, the warm air is collected inside the interstitial space. The south façade is designed with a self-shading, horizontally folding curtain wall with integrated photo voltaics, exposed to the sun. Read the rest of this entry »

The project of Eccentric Housing is done at SCI-Arc, as a research on an object integrated in a city block. The aim of the authors, Spike Liu and Mark A. Santa Ines was to develop a unit interlocking strategy which would integrate in section, composing neighborhoods within a hinged bar, but coming as a massing that would still remain undefined as a housing project.

In order to overcome standard issues of a typical bar-shaped building in a city block, the design promotes the dynamic and improved single massing that is contorted into the site in both plan and section. In plan, it contorts into a courtyard with one end of the bar penetrating it while in section it contorts over and below itself diagonally, producing an irregular mass that still manages to adhere to none of its edges. Therefore the access to light and air is enabled on the east and west.

The units of the proposed building are multi-leveled, allowing for circulation level with access throughout and another private one, therefore all the units are organized into at least two primary zones. The apartment units are designed as self-interlocking. Architects wanted to create a system in which the units would be wrapped around the infrastructure, allowing uniform access to utilities from every unit. Read the rest of this entry »

Tensioned Relaxations by Synthesis Design + Architecture (SDA) is a series of temporary deploy-able outdoor structures, that aim to reinvent the typical street fair tent through their combination of dynamic form, optical effects, aesthetics and variable configurations. Every structure has a uniquely sensual, continuous form made of a tensioned HDPE Mesh skin, overlapped with great artwork by urban artists at SA Studios / SA-UP Collective and a perimeter ring made of fiberglass rod.

Playful effect of the outdoor piece of art is conceived in synergy of structure’s organic form, perforated mesh and silk-screened skin. The structure is surely providing striking graphic identity to New York’s Street Fest – it enables numerous configurations to accommodate a multiplicity of activities, while encouraging visual and spatial interaction. The colorful urban attraction accommodates wide range of activities, from vendors, workshop areas, outdoor classrooms, demonstrations, installations, music to other performances and exhibitions. Read the rest of this entry »

The Music and Dance Center in Ashkelon, Israel, by is a two-purpose building – one wing of this assembly, resembling of stacked boxes one on top of another, is dedicated to dance and another to music. The two uses are separated by form – one volume is facilitating Music Conservatory, while another is a home to Ballet Academy and School of Dance. Moreover, the design hosts libraries, exhibition spaces, places for leisure and studios for dance and music students. However, both volumes share common function – each comprises a large theater. The stages of the theaters are designed for daily use – music and dance performances and rehearsals.

The spacious entrance hall, located between two main entrances, separates but also joins together the music and dance wings, constantly reminding of their fatal and eternal interconnection. The entrance lobby is acting as a reception area. The lobby also serves as an additional exhibition area for contemporary artists.

The functions are installed vertically – each is visible and is a part of sculptural assemblage. Rooftop gardens offer great panoramic views from this stacked tower, and serve also as relaxation areas. Read the rest of this entry »

Chlorophyll Tower by IAMZ Design Studio is re-investigation on future of housing in near future. The concept may seem apocalyptic and dark, but the way units are connected is much rooted in the field bio-mimicry – they take the form of leaves, stemming mainly from the columns. The tower is therefore directly mimicking nature. The same way the leaves absorb water, CO2 and light in order to make energy; this residential building absorbs New York City’s emissions of harmful gasses, also producing energy from it, in order to remain self-sufficient.

The design is flexible – the units are easily stacked one on top of another, along a series of stabilizing columns, forming a grid. That way, the design can change over time, as the needs of the customers change and grow. Mimicking the photosynthetic process of plants, the tower conforms to nature. Not only that the pods are acting like the leaves, but the columns mimic plant stems, while the outer pods slide along them. Read the rest of this entry »