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Architecture
Solar Decathlon hits the road to catch some Spanish sun
By Paul Ridden
17:05 February 4, 2010 PST
Madrid will host the first European version of the Solar Decathlon competition this summer which sees teams from universities throughout the world designing, building and displaying efficient and sustainable solar homes. The overall competition winner being decided after the completion of ten trials aimed at gauging each entry's energy efficiency and sustainability credentials. Read More
Archipod's Pod is an energy efficient, eco-friendly garden office
By Jude Garvey
22:36 January 31, 2010 PST
Are you sick and tired of spending valuable time commuting to work and enduring peak-hour traffic and road rage? Well now that most people have access to mobile phones, email, video conferencing and the Internet - the dream of trading in an office job for working from home can become a reality. However, separating work from home life can sometimes be difficult. That’s where the Pod comes in – it might look like an enormous coconut has landed in your garden, but this is a unique garden office that is energy-efficient and environmentally friendly, plus it gives you a designated space in which to work. Read More
Oregon man thrashes local children in treehouse-building contest
By Loz Blain
21:06 January 20, 2010 PST
Everyone loves a treehouse - they seem to inspire a universal feeling of childlike wonder, and done right they really tickle the old 'living in harmony with nature' glands too. We've covered some beauties over the years here at Gizmag, but this one has to be the grand-daddy of them all. The work of architect Robert Harvey Oshatz, the Wilkinson Residence makes use of a steeply sloped block to put the house's main level right up in the tree canopy. Stunning from every angle, it uses curves and waves to echo the owner's love of the natural landscape with a slightly musical theme. Read More
Secret of the golden ratio revealed
By Darren Quick
23:07 December 22, 2009 PST
The golden ratio describes a rectangle with a length roughly one and a half times its width. Also known as the golden section, golden mean and divine proportion, among other names, it has intrigued mathematicians and artists alike for centuries. The Egyptians supposedly used it to guide the construction the Pyramids, the architecture of ancient Athens is thought to have been based on it, and many artists have fashioned their works around it. This includes Leonardo da Vinci, who used it in the Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian Man. Now a Duke University scientist believes he has figured out the secret behind the golden ratio’s popularity – and it’s all down to evolution. Read More
Londoners may have their heads in the Cloud for 2012 Olympics
By Jeff Salton
19:19 December 1, 2009 PST
A towering collection of giant bubbles dubbed “The Cloud” is an ambitious design proposed by a team of leading architects and engineers as a spectacular landmark to commemorate London's role as host of the 2012 Olympics. Sitting atop a number of 400ft lightweight transparent towers, a "cloud" of inflatable, light-emitting spheres is intended to create a three-dimensional “floating” display in the skies over London, fed by real time information from all over the world and viewable from most parts of the three-time Olympics city. The Cloud was shortlisted in a competition set up by London Mayor Boris Johnson who has committed to build a tourist attraction in the Olympic Park. Read More
ZMS-08: world's first Blu-ray quality media processor for handheld devices
By Paul Ridden
19:05 November 11, 2009 PST
With the development of the ZMS-08 system on a chip, ZiiLabs is aiming to bring high performance media processing to low power devices. As well as allowing full Blu-ray quality 1080p video playback, the chip supports simultaneous HD encode and decode, 3D and 2D image processing and advanced audio. Read More
Technosphere: eco-friendly Earth in miniature proposed for Dubai
By Gizmag Team
18:18 November 4, 2009 PST
It's been a while since we've taken a look at the weird and wonderful canvas that is Dubai's skyline of the future, and this proposal from James Law Cybertecture would slot neatly in among radical designs like the Almeisan Tower and the spiraling ZPO. Shaped like a giant disco ball, the Technosphere is conceived as a self-sustaining model of the Earth in miniature incorporating a range of active and passive systems to meet these goals. Read More
Tilera unveils Tile GX100, the 100-core general purpose processor
17:31 November 1, 2009 PST
If you thought Intel's plans to embed eight cores in its high-end processors were a bit too out there, you'll find that the latest processor developed by semiconductor start-up Tilera is even more of an extreme. Packing 100 1.25GHz to 1.5GHz cores on a single chip, the Gx100 brings parallel processing to the extreme thanks to a new architecture that minimizes the bus bottleneck in today's multi-core processors. Read More
Solar Decathlon 2009 results are in, and the winner is...
By Darren Quick
23:23 October 19, 2009 PDT
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solar Decathlon has wound up in Washington, D.C. with Team Germany taking the top honors, followed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in second place, and Team California taking out third. As we reported last week the competition to design, build, and operate the most attractive and efficient solar-powered home saw 20 university-led teams from around the world competing in ten contests, ranging from subjective elements such as architecture, market viability, communications, lighting design, and engineering, to technical measurements of how well the homes provided energy for space heating and cooling, hot water, home entertainment, appliances, and net metering. Read More
Everyone gets a water view in Europe’s first rotating hotel
By Darren Quick
23:09 October 18, 2009 PDT
There are plans to build what will be Europe’s first rotating hotel in Croatia. The hotel will form the centerpiece of a new resort to be built near Split, the second-largest city in Croatia that is situated on the shores of the Adriatic Sea. It was the desire to give guests views of the Adriatic Sea from all rooms that led to the rotating design from Richard Hywel Evans of holiday resort designer specialists, RHE. Read More
The world's highest hotel... but not for long!
By Loz Blain
06:29 August 10, 2009 PDT
If a gob-smacking view is your thing - and heck, it's mine - you could do worse than check in at the Park Hyatt, Shanghai, which has just taken the mantle of the world's highest hotel. See that nice pagoda-shaped building you're looking down on out the window? Yeah, that's the Jin Mao Tower, and it's about 40 meters taller than the Empire State Building in NYC. The Park Hyatt Shanghai occupies floors 79 to 93 of the Shanghai World Financial Center, the tallest tower in China at a massive 492 meters - and it's shaped like a giant bottle opener. Rack rates start at around US$320 per night, and ramp up to nearly US$13K for the stunning Chairman Suite. Read More
The Dragonfly: vertical farming vision for New York's skyline
By Paul Lester
04:17 July 16, 2009 PDT
Building another skyscraper in the middle of New York may not seem like an environmentally-sound project. That is of course, unless said skyscraper is capable of providing a sprawling urban populous with self-sustaining production of food, reuse of natural resources and biodegradeable waste. Enter The Dragonfly, a dazzling, ethereal design from Vincent Callebaut Architectures which underlines the future potential of vertical farming. Read More
ZPO tower Dubai - stunning and sustainable
By Jeff Salton
19:37 June 29, 2009 PDT
From the land of opulence – Dubai - comes another amazing feat of architecture and engineering to add to the emirate’s extravagant skyline. The spiraling tubular design for the Za'abeel Park Observation (ZPO) Tower incorporates roof gardens, extensive solar paneling and geothermal cooling and ventilation in an organically inspired structure topped by three observation deck "petals". Read More
Rural Space designed to give eco-tourism a temporary lift
By Karen Sprey
17:08 June 16, 2009 PDT
With so many heritage-listed sites and national parks in Britain, there are tight restrictions on what can be permanently built and where. Designer Philip Crewe, however, has come up with the idea of Rural Space, a temporary living space powered by wind and solar energy, which helps people get closer to nature, in considerably more comfort than the standard tent or hostel. Read More
Dubai's striking O-14 development has solid solar credentials
By Karen Sprey
06:37 June 9, 2009 PDT
Dubai can lay claim to some of the world’s most outlandish buildings and many are also at the forefront of innovation in eco- and- environmentally friendly design. Joining their ranks is the 0-14 (‘oh-14’), a 22 storey, 300,000 square-foot commercial building perched on a two-storey podium in Dubai’s Business Bay. It's defining feature - a lace-like concrete exoskeleton peppered with more than 1,000 holes - provides both the building’s structure and its facade, delivering shade, light and air, plus stunning views of the Bay and skyline. Read More
Architect-designed Ramp House is a skaters dream pad
By Jamilah Le
23:46 April 1, 2009 PDT
For skating lovers who heard the phrase ‘don’t you dare skate in the house’ one too many times as a kid, this might just be the dream home you’ve always wanted. The unique dwelling is described as having a ‘curved form interior’ (otherwise known as a ramp), but it's not just 'a house with a ramp in it'. Archivirus Architecture and Design's creation sets out to deliver a completely 'skatable habitat' for the client (which is not actually Tony Hawk -he has his half-pipe built in the backyard) with smooth concrete and curved spaces to enhance the idea of motion. Read More
AIRchitecture: Flying classrooms of the future
By Karen Sprey
05:00 March 31, 2009 PDT
If you’ve ever sat in a classroom, bored silly, and wished you could just fly away, here’s the solution, well, sort of. The new concept from Geotectura and Malka - a flying structure for Delft University’s Architecture Faculty - melds spacecraft with studio space to create AIRchitecture, a dynamic, real-world learning environment with a minimal carbon footprint. Read More
Vertical farming with seawater
By Darren Quick
04:03 March 24, 2009 PDT
The saying used to go, ‘only in America’, but in recent years it might be truer to say, ‘only in Dubai’, especially when it comes to architectural wonders. Buildings that would be unfeasible just about anywhere else seem to regularly spring from the ground in the oil rich emirate. The next eye-popping construction to grace the skyline could be a seawater vertical farm that uses seawater to cool and humidify greenhouses and to convert sufficient humidity back in to fresh water to irrigate the crops. Read More
Shenzhen's solar-and-wind-powered skyscraper
By Karen Sprey
17:24 March 1, 2009 PST
Traditional architecture has been swept away and replaced by skyscrapers in China’s bid to modernize its cities and house its huge population and thriving business interests. Shenzhen in southern China’s Guangdong province has grown from a fishing village in the 1970s to a vibrant economic and financial centre - one of China’s most successful special economic zones. Now its skyline will be graced with a 49-storey solar-and-wind-powered tower designed by Austrian architecture firm Coop Himmelblau. The second skin of the building will be lined with photovoltaic cells and feature mechanisms to provide natural ventilation, reduce wind pressure, shade the interior from sun and display multimedia banners. Read More
Sliding House plays Hide-and-Seek
By David Greig
20:56 February 26, 2009 PST
Known as the Sliding House, this unique piece of architectural lateral thinking was designed by London-based practice de Rijke Marsh Morgan. The brief was for a self-build house where the client could grow food, entertain, enjoy the landscape and basically retire in peace. The outcome was three buildings arranged along a longitudinal axis, with a garage set perpendicularly, off to the side to create a small patio... and one hell of a surprise. Read More
Solving the global food crisis: vertical aeroponic farm grows food out of thin air
By Loz Blain
01:14 February 17, 2009 PST
More than 50% of our planet's massive human population is concentrated into urban centres - and on current estimates, that's likely to be as high as 80% by the year 2050, a year many of us will be around to see. So the challenge facing today's forward-thinking architects is how to create positive outcomes out of a crushing space constraint. Going upwards, in projects like Eugene Tsui's Ultima Tower and the London Vertical Village concept, seems to offer some practical solutions to the living space conundrum - but what about feeding all those people? Vertical Aeroponic Farming seems to be an idea whose time has come - it will let us use land, nutrients, power and water much more efficiently than ever before, while delivering a quality-controllable, year-round and emissions-positive food source for urban communities. Eric Vergne's Dystopian Farm is a design study that examines how a vertical farm might use the latest in agricultural and architectural technology to feed the cities of the future. Read More
The Vitruvian Building System: green, cost-efficient and fast
By David Greig
17:51 February 15, 2009 PST
When we think green house emissions, fume spewing factories and highways choked with gas guzzling vehicles are usually the first images that spring to mind, but it may surprise some readers to learn that buildings represent a sizeable chunk of our collective carbon footprint. In America, it's estimated that buildings contribute to 36% of energy consumption and 30% of green house gas emissions and it's an area that's ripe for improvement. Innovative American building company Vitruvian is doing just that by offering a full service green building system that utilizes pre-engineered modular construction consisting of inter lockable panels to form a complete, weather tight building shell. As well as delivering extremely low energy bills, Vitruvian has calculated that if its process was used for all building replacement and construction in America between now and the year 2030, its environmental impact would be the equivalent of removing more than 80 million cars from the road. Read More
Madrid to get radical new solar-coated landmark
22:47 February 12, 2009 PST
Spain has a well-earned reputation for extraordinary architecture that, like many buildings around the world which defy convention, divide opinions and cause passions to run high. The next dazzling addition to Madrid's skyline will be the Centro Internacional de Convenciones de la Ciudad de Madrid (CICCM), and it offers much more than simply a conversation piece. Shaped like a giant glass wheel, the Convention Center will be completely covered in photovoltaic panels but will still provide adequate sunlight to reduce the need for artificial light through the use of concave design elements that scatter light into the interior. The 110 meter tall structure will include a rainwater catchment system and house a 5,000 person auditorium and exposition centers in its 100,000 square meter layout. Read More
POLLI-Brick: turning plastic bottles into green architecture
By Emily Clark
03:01 January 12, 2009 PST
From the maker of the HYmini wind and solar portable charger comes a polymer architecture brick combining post-consumer materials with environmentally friendly function. The POLLI-Brick is made entirely of recycled materials and offers passive cooling, natural ventilation and even integrated solar/wind powered LED lighting. Read More
The space-age Aerohotel concept
02:47 November 26, 2008 PST
We've seen some incredible examples of terraforming in recent years - most notably "The World" in Dubai - and if the fact that the government of the low-lying Maldives is looking to buy land elsewhere to escape global warming is any indication, the practice of resurrecting land from the waters may be about to become a whole lot more commonplace. But why shift all that dirt around if you can just use stilts? Alexander Asadov's futuristic Aerohotel concept is an alternative to man-made islands that would provide a 650 foot wide circular playground perched over 200 feet above the waterline using only three supports designed to cause minimum disturbance to the ocean floor. Read More
windykites1
- February 9, 2010 @ 19:22 UTC
