Award-winning architects Ben van Berkel (UNStudio) and Zaha Hadid have recently disclosed their designs for a couple of eco-pavilions that will be on everyone’s attention in the celebrations of Burnham Plan Centennial this summer in Chicago. The main goal of both pavilion’s design is to realize the importance of imagining a superior future for all. The Curvilinear pavilion designed by Hadid will be developed with stretched fabric over a frame made of aluminum. The tent-like shape has been planned to be collapsible and re-installed without any difficulties. On the other hand, Van Berkel crafted out various materials for his design including wood and steel.
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Studiomobile, an Italian architectural firm, have been working during the last couple of years in the United Arab Emirates and their most recent development is the concept seawater vertical farm. Their design, the Seawater Vertical farm utilizes seawater to keep cool and moisten greenhouses and to transform enough humidity back in to water to irrigate the plants. This project would be very much helpful where the supply of fresh water is limited and not much local cultivations are taking part. This project is very expensive but has been considered feasible because of the urban transport problem and the high soil value.
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Sinthesya is both an indoor and an outdoor lighting system or a light lamp that was designed by D’arc Studio and the talented Camillo Vanacore, a designer who is known for awesome but state of the art designs and creations. This lighting system has leaf-shaped design which coincided with its inspiration – the chlorophyllous photosynthesis that naturally happens in the leaves of plant. This Sinthesya lighting also has a number of desirable characteristics such as photovoltaic panels that render this appliance rechargeable, waterproof and most of all, very eco-friendly.
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This new architectural concept has been designed by BSC Architecture, a New York based studio. The concept was a finalist at the MoMA/P.S.1 Young architecture program competition. It addresses the issue of today’s time of renewed excitement about precision, efficiency and utilizing the summer resources thereby reducing the wastage applicable at the end of summer. The best part is that it can be set up anywhere and the basic shape is that of the cloud which can be the best source of shade on a sunny day. Air is used as the structural medium for inflating and suspending transparent volumes of lightweight fabric over the concrete and gravel courtyard. So get ready to have fun in the sun!
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Today with lot of environmental developments happening world over like global warming, energy crisis, lifestyle changes, it’s become even more difficult to design houses meeting all these requirements. More and more architectural designs are using digital technologies with respect to modeling, simulation, evaluation and fabrication resulting in complex shaped buildings which incorporates the above challenges. One such project is coming up in Tel Aviv whose primary resources are sun, wind, and land and these are fairly distributed amongst these complex structures thus making an optimum utilization of all. It’s of course high quality housing complete with latest gadgets but run on the natural resources. Architect Yiftach Ben Meir, the designer, is a recent graduate from The Faculty Of Architecture and Town Planning at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology (IIT). His final project SeaO2 was conceived under the framework of Tecnion Computer Oriented Design Studio, T_Code with the instruction of dr. Yasha j. Grobman.
Text from Yiftach :
SeaO2 is an experimental ecological housing project. The project poses an alternative to current plans for Tel Aviv North West coastal district. SeaO2 demonstrates vast use of cutting edge computer software, some being used in the aerospace industry, in order to improve building performance and to ensure the existence of a sustainable urban environment with a minimal ecological footprint. The project final form is a consequence of a scientific approach that calculates numerous of elements: the sun orbit, wind conditions, maximum open scenic views, very high density and more, all in a free-form organic manner.
Advanced Computer Simulations ensure the project’s credibility. The project’s unique morphology enables: optimized solar reception for heating at winter time, self-shadowing and solar reception for electricity generation at summer time, natural lighting, optimized natural ventilation, open looks to the natural coastal environment, public green spaces, rain collection and more. Various passive mechanical systems complement the basic morphology, enable better performance and create an energy efficient, environmentally friendly housing project
Designer : Yiftach Ben Meir
