Sustainability to me is achieving energy efficiency, a positive impact on residents’ health, comfort, and an improved living environment; All of this can be achieved by implementing the appropriate technology inside the building. Sustainable architecture means being able to meet the requirements of the consumer, considering the time and natural resources required from the earliest stages of the project, entering the environment in the most natural way, to plan ahead by making the space and materials completely reusable.
- Earthships Biotecture's project is a symbol of sustainable architecture as well as a refined aesthetic. It is a passive solar house with a zero-energy heating and cooling system that is completely independent of municipal energy sources. These structures are manufactured with a variety of materials such as dust, clay, hay, wood, most tires filled with dust as load-bearing walls, while cans or bottles are used for non-load-bearing walls. Their environmental impact is reduced and their features perform better than normal houses.
- Clark Park WMS Boathouse /Studio Gang. Studio Gang Architects chose to use light control glass in a large glazed area. These products react differently to sunlight than ordinary glass, due to a special coating deposited on the surface of the glass during the manufacturing process. This allows most of the heat to be absorbed by the glass, but not into the interior of the building. Because of their high reflectivity, most of the heat is reflected outside. In this case, the choice of glass is important, as the team wrote in the project description. The glass allows the layers of the structure to be heated in winter and ventilated in summer to minimize energy consumption throughout the year."
- Shanghai Tower
The exterior of the building has a rotating shape, and the asymmetric exterior opposites reduce the building's wind load (the pressure exerted by airflow on the engineering structure) by 24 percent. The funnel-shaped spiral tip also collects rainwater and channels it into a tank for use by the building. In terms of the natural light source, Shanghai Tower also adopts an all-glass curtain wall, and the outer curtain wall has a special colored glaze, which can play a shading effect in summer, and the transverse of each layer can also effectively block the bright sunlight in summer. The lighting system of the building uses the most efficient LED light source, an all-around central green lighting control system, and other green energy-saving devices. The building also uses geothermal sources for heating and cooling, which is quite environmentally friendly!
