| June 08 - Blog Articles - Page 5 |
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| Monday, 31 March 2008 19:00 |
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Page 5 of 12 Stunning New Terminal at Shenzen Bao’an International Airport Mahesh Basantani in Inhabitat It’s not often that we get to talk about airports but there is a lot happening in the aviation industry. One landmark development is the proposed construction of a new terminal at Shenzen Bao’an International Airport in China. Positioned as a gateway to China and designed by architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, the terminal will no doubt be a sleek transit destination. What has captured our attention is the incredible double skin canopy intended to let patterned natural light into the space, and significantly reduce energy consumption. Nation's Largest Single-Building Solar Energy Project Planned for Atlantic City Preston D K in Jetson Green Atlantic City Convention Center has just signed a 20-year agreement with Pepco Energy Services to have a 2.36 megawatt solar roof installed on the building. When completed by the end of this year, the project is projected to be the largest single-building solar energy project in the United States. That's 13,321 photovoltaic panels covering roughly two-thirds of the building AND a savings of roughly $4.4 million in electricity costs over the 20-year deal. Under the terms of the agreement between the convention center and Pepco, Pepco will pay for the installation and the convention center will then purchase electricity generated from Pepco. A Floating Room and Broken Architecture: The Work of Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset Jimmy Stamp in Life Without Buildings Suspended from two black balloons, a sparse white room floats to the top of a repurposed Berlin train station. I’ve been haunted by this image—or rather the resulting imagined implications of it—since a trip to Berlin almost 5 years ago. It was, of course, an art installation in the German Capital’s Hamburger Bahnoff, by an artist whose name has eluded me until today. Via Le Territoire Des Sens, I’ve learned that the work, Elevated Gallery / Powerless Structures, Fig. 146, was created by Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset. Montreal’s missing beaches Christopher DeWolf in Spacing Montreal Nathalie Collard has a column in today’s La Presse lamenting the lack of access Montrealers have to their waterways. “Les Montréalais habitent une île, mais n’ont pratiquement pas accès à l’eau. C’est aberrant,” she writes. It’s true: despite being surrounded by water, including a variety of lakes, basins, channels, rapids and one of North America’s great rivers, Montreal is one of the least water-accessible cities I know. Whatever local instinct we once had to head to the water has been quashed by pollution, industry and highways. Low Impact Living: Green Prefab — Everyone’s into Modular Homes Low Impact Living in Green Options Editor’s note: Modular (or prefabricated) housing is hot, and our friends at Low Impact Living have the lowdown on some of the companies driving this trend. This post was originally published on Thursday, June 12, 2008. It seems everyone is “going modular” these days with the rapid growth in the movement of green prefab design and construction. The buzz in modular construction is causing a rush of new designs, innovative products, and advanced modular systems being introduced. The goal of prefab is still the same as minimizing waste while maximizing efficiency. To learn more about prefab design and what makes it a compelling form of green building, please click here. No longer are the days when just calling yourself a prefab company is considered environmentally progressive. ROM rooftop garden preview Matthew Hague in Spacing Toronto • understanding the urban landscape This morning I had the opportunity to preview the Royal Ontario Museum’s new rooftop garden, known as Liza’s Garden in memory of philanthropist and business person Elizabeth Samuel. Sitting on-top of the original 1914 wing of the building, the garden was designed to be a focal point from inside the ROM’s exclusive C5 restaurant (at the top of the newly opened Michael Lee Chin Crystal). Designed by Toronto-based firm PLANT Architect Inc., winners of the competition to design Nathan Phillips Square in March, 2007, with Gardens in the Sky, Green Roof Consultant, the garden is a 9 500 square-foot composition of trees, tilted planting beds, and shallow reflecting pools. Novel SolarDuct Creates Electricity and Heat Energy Preston D K in Jetson Green Conserval Engineering just announced the release of their newest product, SolarDuct PV/T, which is a rooftop solar PV system that goes beyond generating renewable energy from on-site solar power. With the SolarDuct PV/T system, solar panels are mounted on an metal collector panels that channel excess heat from the solar array into the building's HVAC system. As a result, this system, which is part photovoltaic and part thermal, can generate electricity and put heat to use when heat is needed in the building. Conserval Engineering estimates that its SolarDuct PV/T system can reach a total operating efficiency of over 50%, thereby reducing the ROI time frame on the entire investment. With a faster payback, companies might just be more inclined to invest in a SolarDuct rooftop system, even without favorable state and local incentives. Dale Chihuly, New San Francisco Treat mediabistro.com: UnBeige People tend to get giddy around the fantastical glass works of Dale Chihuly (perhaps this is why casinos can't seem to get enough of him), so expect Bay Area denizens to be unusually upbeat this summer. Saturday marked the opening of San Francisco's first major exhibition of the artist's work, and it's a big one. On view at the de Young Museum through September 28, the show encompasses 11 galleries of new and archival works spanning the last four decades. The artist calls it "the most ambitious show I've created to date." Besides chandeliers with such evocative titles as "Orange Hornet and Eelgrass," the show features a recreation of Chihuly's 1972 white milk-glass and neon installation as well as a 56-foot-long mille fiori garden of glass forms that only look like they're growing. Luxurious Dining & Decor at Lucier Brian Libby in Portland Architecture At the south end of Riverplace along the Willamette, beside the new Strand Standard condos, sits the new Lucier restaurant, a very high-end dining establishment with a sizable investment in its architecture and interiors. I visited Lucier last week as part of a press lunch. Hopefully it won't seem like I'm writing this post in exchange for the complimentary striped bass carpaccio with slivered foie gras, which was one of about ten different small plates we had over a four hour meal. |
| Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 August 2008 02:03 |
