A New Dimension to Building Green Architecture

Dynamic Tower
Dynamic Tower

The Dynamic tower, the first building in motion, takes the concept of green buildings to the next level where it will generate electricity for itself as well as other nearby buildings, making it the first sky-scraper designed to be self-powered.

The building generates electricity from wind turbines mounted horizontally on each floor, this eighty storey building will have seventy nine wind turbines, making it a true green power plant.

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Slums in Cities | Providing Low-Cost Housing to End Slums

What are Slums? How and where do slums develop?

In the last few decades, there had been a tremendous growth in emerging countries like India, Brazil, Mexico and China. This had been mainly due to a rapid expansion in the manufacturing sector. Thus, there has been a massive migration of workers to cities and production centers. These new workers cannot afford housing. This is what gives rise to slums, as the homeless make temporary shelters which get transformed rapidly into semi-permanent housing colonies. People migrate to cities because the comparative poverty and hardship involved in their alternatives (ie. subsistence farming) is worse.

Dharavi Slums, Mumbai, India

According to UN-HABITAT, a  slum is defined as a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. It is estimated that one billion humans live in shanty towns. One in every three people in the world will live in slums within 30 years unless governments control unprecedented urban growth, according to a UN report.

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Three dimensions of Sustainable Environmental Architecture

Sustainability

Sustainable building involves considering the entire life-cycle of buildings, taking environmental quality, functional compatibility and future values into account. In the past, attention has been primarily focused on the size of the building stock. In many countries, quality issues have hardly played a significant role. However, in strict quantity terms, the building and housing market is now saturated in many countries, and the demand for quality is growing importance.

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Building Green Architecture | Sustainable Design

What is “Green Approach”?

It is difficult to define Green building Architecture. Although we could define what the green approach could be like. It takes into consideration the impact of design of buildings on the environment. Constructing a building requires resources. For example, materials for construction, fuel, users engagement in design etc. All of these factors are considered in Green building architecture. They form the backbone of this type of approach.

the Blu Homes mkSolaire, a green building designed by Michelle Kaufmann
the Blu Homes mkSolaire, a green building designed by Michelle Kaufmann

Designing green buildings has become a motto to many design companies and individual designers. It is important to pay attention to the conflicting issues that arise out of design. Every design decision needs to be thought with depth since it has environmental implications which could be harmful to us.

Measures for green buildings can be divided into four areas:

  1. Reduction in energy consumption
  2. Environmental damage prevention by reducing external pollution
  3. Reduction in embodied energy and prevent resource depletion
  4. Indoor air quality (and hence maintain good health)

One of the excellent examples of Green Architecture is “Aliens Space Station”.

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