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The recently unveiled Langley Academy in the Berkshires, UK, is yet another exemplary model of sustainable education facilities. Designed by Inhabitat favorite Foster + Partners, the gorgeous wood clad academy focuses its curriculum around sciences and the environment. With dedicated science laboratories, a unique floorplan, and a design focused on green building, these 1,100 students have an amazing and inspirational place to learn. Now if only all of our buildings had this much thought put into them.

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Post tags: academy, eco school, foster, Foster + Partners, Langley Academy, solar hot water, sustainable school, UK, water conservation

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Recently the Elleray Preparatory School in the UK unveiled an incredible set of tree-top classrooms. Situated in the Lake District National Park, the three green-built class pods stand on stilts connected by a center platform made from recycled materials. Built to have a low impact on the environment while accommodating the school’s expanding student body, the Treehouse School is sure to inspire all the children the walk through its doors.

Read the rest of Solar Powered Treehouse Classrooms Unveiled in the UK

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Post tags: classrooms, eco school, eco-classroom, green classroom, kita design company, pod, robert gaukroger, school, solar panels, UK

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Nicholas Szczepaniak will recieve the RIBA Silver Medal next month for his extraordinary graduate project “A Defensive Architecture”. I am delighted to be the first person to be publishing his work in my recently release book “Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands“. Nick’s work really is out on the hinterlands, a landscape plighted by climate change and rising water levels, social order breaks down, resources become rationed and public space becomes further militarised to maintain social order. Set in the Blackwater Estuary, Essex, his allegorical and provocative defensive architectures envisage the construction of a set of austere coastal defence towers that perform multiple functions within this dystopian future.

The militarised towers are alive — breathing, creaking, groaning, sweating and crying when stressed. Airbags on the face of the towers expand and contract, while hundreds of tensile trunks are sporadically activated, casting water onto the heated facades producing steam. An empty watchtower at the top of each tower gives the impression that the fragile landscape below is being constantly surveyed.

Across the estuary, a bed of salt marshes provides a natural form of flood defence and habitats for wildlife. Due to rising water levels and adverse weather conditions, the salt marshes are quickly deteriorating. The proposal suggests that mega structures can be integrated into, and encourage, the growth of natural defence mechanisms.

Over time, sand is collected at the base of each tower to form a spit across the mouth of the estuary, absorbing energy from the waves. Internally, the towers serve as a vast repository for mankind’s most valuable asset — knowledge. The architecture is an ark, protecting books from cumulative and catastrophic deterioration.

Early experiments with sugar and caramel were used to develop a prototypical object that responds to its surrounding climate. When heat is applied to sugar, its molecular arrangement is changed to form caramel. A series of experiments with domestic objects demonstrated how molten caramel can be extruded in a state of tension, then left to set to act in compression. Thin sheets, up to one metre in height, were also formed and then hung as a curtain. Responding to environmental conditions, these objects would crack, split, absorb moisture and dilapidate. They became indicators of climate change and became beacons of abnormal environmental conditions.

Szczepaniak’s project identified repetition, control, anticipated tension and surveying from an elevated position as properties crucial to his architecture. These evolved through an intensive process of speculative drawing, model making and a series of analogue and digital collage techniques. Studies were made of defensive typologies, in particular watchtowers and the Maze prison, built at the height of the Northern Irish Conflict… More information on this project is features in Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands

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In the desert of Arizona, architect Rick Joy has created a rough weathered steel exterior form that contrasts with the refinement of the soft white, steel and maple wood interior palette. The house, defined by retaining walls burrowed into the hillside, is punctuated with openings that frame articulated views of the landscape.

No house should ever be on a hill [...] It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other

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The Solar Decathlon, the super solar architecture competition held in Washington D.C. bi-annually, officially kicked off today, and Rice University’s awesomely affordable ZEROW House is already making waves. The first round of evaluations took place yesterday, and this low-budget underdog placed 4th among the twenty competitors after being recognized in the categories Comfort Zone and Appliances. What is most impressive about this team is that the average budget of the 20 solar decathlon houses at the mall is $490,000, while the ZEROW home was built for only $140,000!!! Even more impressive, the ZEROW House was designed specifically for Houston’s Third Ward Neighborhood as part of Project Row House – an organization that seeks to develop housing for low-to moderate-income families.

Read the rest of SOLAR DECATHLON 2009: Rice University’s $140,000 ZEROW House Keeps Up With the High Rollers

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Post tags: “green wall”, Green Building, rice university, Solar Decathlon, Solar Power, Sustainable Building, Washington DC, zerow home, zerow house

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