A new green complex from world renowned architecture firm Foster + Partners will be adding more than a dash of green to the Singapore skyline. As sustainability becomes an essential ingredient to development in this island nation, the UK-based firm is leaving no stone unturned to make good use of alternative energy sources in this 150,000 square meter mixed-use project. As the winning design from an international competition, Singapore’s new eco-complex from Foster + Partners is pushing the green envelope from top to bottom in this sophisticated downtown design.

The complex will fill an entire city block between Singapore’s Marina Center and the Civic District with commercial, residential, retail, hotels, and a ‘green’ link to an Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station. All facades will be fitted with solar cells and, to help control solar gain, direct sunlight will be filtered through ribbon-like canopies rising from the base of the entire complex to the exposed east and west elevations of the towers.

The canopies will form vertical louvers at the elevations and provide more renewable on-site energy with integrated thin-film solar arrays. Vertical green spaces, and extensive sky gardens are also important components of the towers, further greening the whole structure with natural vegetation and ambient temperature moderation.

The slanted facades are designed to catch the wind and direct it downwards for natural cooling of the ground floor spaces. A rainwater harvesting system, geothermal heating system, chilled beams and ceilings, and an ice storage system for cooling are further enhancements planned for the complex.
While it looks intensely complex, the design takes advantage of simple green building principles like passive solar, natural ventilation and natural cooling. Foster + Partners’ dynamic design will function in sync with the surrounding climate, and just might be the perfect merger of elevated architecture and grounded green build thinking.

The green building movement in Asia may be lagging behind the U.S. and Europe, but it is slowly gaining momentum. Today’s Wall Street Journal features a piece that highlights eco-architecture projects taking shape in Asian cities across Thailand, China, Hong Kong and Singapore. One project is Ocean One, a 91-story beachfront residential high-rise in the Thai resort town of Pattaya.

Designed by Australia-based firm Woods Bagot, the building (set to be completed in 2010) will be the first eco-friendly high-rise and tallest building to be built in Thailand. Energy efficient appliances will save residents as much as 30% on electricity bills and up to 80% of the water used will be recycled for toilets and then treated for use outdoors. “A highspeed elevator will zip visitors to an observation deck, generating enough electricity as it descends to light the deck at night. Solar panels on the roof of an adjacent commercial building will power shops and restaurants.” Excess energy will even be fed into Thailand’s electricity grid.

Riding the wave of new development in China, Studio SHIFT recently won a competition to design a new landmark in Miyi County. Miyi Tower will sit on the edge of the Anning river as a symbol of the new face of Sichuan provence. The tower’s most striking feature is its whimsical latticework skin, which suffuses the structure with daylight and “evokes the shimmering surface of the river below.” This connection is reinforced by the project’s goal of filtering and transforming the polluted Anning river into a lush landscape of wetlands, lakes, leisure and agricultural areas.

The Miyi Tower itself will be a state-of-the-art community space providing a multitude of educational, entertainment and community programs aimed at promoting the region’s heritage and natural amenities. Ambitiously redefining the term multi-use, the tower will feature “an auditorium, exhibition spaces and restaurants featuring local cuisine on the interior while open-air floors are used as event spaces, gardens and an observation deck. The pairs of lower and upper enclosed spaces are joined by structures which act as light monitors. These light monitors, of which there is a third at the highest level, are aligned to take advantage of different lighting conditions throughout the day. The tower is sheathed in a very porous yet continuous skin that gives the various programs their unified form. As porous building skins are often treated as opaque modules with subtracted holes (i.e. perforated skins) Studio SHIFT deliberately created the inverse.“

The Daewoo Consortium and the municipality of Gwanggyo announced the MVRDV concept design for a dense city centre winner of the developer’s competition for the future new town of Gwanggyo, located 35km south of the Korean capital Seoul. The plan consists of a series of overgrown hill shaped buildings with great programmatic diversity, aiming for high urban density and encouragement of further developments around this so-called ‘Power Centre’, one of the envisioned two centre’s of the future new town.

The site is surrounded by a beautiful lake and forested hills, the design aims to create a landscape on top of the new program that enlarges the green qualities and that links the surrounding parks by turning the site into a park.
The shifting of the floors causes as a counter effect hollow cores that form large atriums. They serve as lobbies for the housing and offices, plazas for the shopping center and halls for the museum and leisure functions. In each tower a number of voids connect to the atrium providing for light and ventilation and creating semi-public spaces. On the lower floors the atriums are connected through a series of public spaces on various levels linking the towers and serving the outdoor facilities of the culture, retail and leisure program. The Power Centre creates a dense urban program with a green regard.



Said in a simplistic and immediate kind of way (without any form of profound analysis), it's almost (sort of) a symbiosis between the Lego habitation complex in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Montenegro residences in Budva (both) by BIG.


Lego residences


Montenegro residences in Budva


Nevertheless, it's (still) an interesting concept. What do you think?

Recently, Taiwan held a competition for a Performing Arts Center in the city of Taipei.

The main purpose of this project is to build a Performing Arts Center to serve a variety of large-scale performances, including dramas and operas. The main structure will contain three theaters: a 1,500-seat Grand Theater, and two 800-seat theaters for repertory performances. These performance spaces must fulfill the specific needs of many different styles of performing arts. The Taipei Performing Arts Center will be a professional-level facility that meets international standards, providing a world-class performing arts venue for the Taipei area.
For the past two decades, there hasn't been one performance venue built in the Taipei area that meets international standards. Local performing arts groups must submit proposals at least one and half years prior to performance, to be wait-listed for the National Theater or National Concert Hall, and often these performance spaces are unavailable to many groups. In addition, after 20 years of operation, the facilities of National Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center are worn out and somewhat unreliable.
The aim of this project is to establish a world-class professional performing arts center for arts lovers, whether they are creative artists, performers, or audiences. Moreover, the center will foster arts education, support arts commerce and employment, and improve the standard of living from the artistic perspective.

Architects from all over the world submited their work and the winners were:

1. Number: Morphosis Architects / Thom Mayne
Nationality: USA

2. Number: Jose Ignacio ABALOS, Spain
Joint Tenderer: Renata Sentkiewicz, Spain
(ABALOS+SENTKIEWICZ ARQUITECTOS)

3. Number: Office for Metropolitan Architecture(OMA) STEDEBOUW B.V / OLE SCHEEREN, Netherlands

Their proposals are not known yet, still, here are some other participations:

V.L.B.
(This is the proposal from my atelier...)






One remarkable competition entry that didn’t make it among the top 7 is this proposal by Vienna-based Architects Collective:




DOSarchitects


Mafredi Nicoletti (former teacher of mine during my Erasmus year in Rome)

Apparently Fortune Magazine has just made a list of the best companies to work in.. Take a look on who scored first place.
(From ideiainteligente.blogspot.com)

Hong Kong International Airport


Airwalk


Conquering land


Bank of China and Friends


Convention Center


Bruce Lee


Hong Kong Skyline