Design Inspirations
I really like the Suzhou Museum designed by Leoh Ming Pei. Suzhou Museum is in Suzhou, a city famous for its Suzhou-style Garden architecture. The design of the Suzhou Museum is based on traditional Suzhou architectural style and harmonizes with its surrounding environment. The roof of the museum attracts me very much. The design of the museum's roof is Suzhou's traditional sloped roof landscape - cornices. The roof is made of glass and stone, which is also a traditional Chinese roofing system, and a steel structure is used to make a wooden beam and wooden rafter frame system. Suzhou has many water systems. Suzhou Museum is perfectly integrated with the local geographical environment and has an extra special beauty. To my surprise, when you stand on the stairs leading to the second floor, one side of you is suspended in the air and the other side is in the lotus pond. The building cleverly combines traditional culture, local environmental characteristics and architectural purpose.
Big Ideas
- Buildings are currently one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide. 40% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions come from buildings. In some building structures, we can replace concrete with sustainable materials. Wood releases carbon dioxide at a much lower rate than concrete. Cross-laminated timber has good strength, economical and fire-resistant properties.
- According to the emphasis of LEED, Green roofs can reduce the roof and surrounding air’s temperatures and insulate heat to reduce heat islands. According to the EPA, green roofs can reduce roof temperatures by 30-40 °F and reduce total building energy consumption by 0.7%. We can use the green roof with biosolar, and the benefit is expected to be $300,000 compared to the traditional roof and save $100,000 in peak electricity bills.
- We can use semi-transparent solar panels as windows on the south side of the building. Organic solar cells are transparent. The panels can be added in glass. Solar windows can save about 40% on energy and 30% on costs.
- Make use of natural light for your design. Traditional buildings often feature closed roofs, allowing natural light to create a special finish inside the building. At the same time, the increased light area allows us to reduce the intensity of the light to save energy.
- The water circulation system can collect, treat and reuse water, thus reducing the waste and consumption of new water resources, while also reducing environmental pollution. At the same time, we combine a water circulation system with a flowing water system to regulate humidity and purify indoor air.
