Archinect - News

Two Scandinavian companies will recycle data center heat for food production

2024-11-22T15:32:00-05:00

A new project aimed at developing a circular economy in Scandinavia will build two large commercial greenhouses that run on waste heat taken from nearby data centers. The projects will be located in Varde, Denmark, and Östersund, Sweden. The project will increase domestic food production. The agreement between WA3RM and the Vinga Group is worth $908 million. It could also set a valuable precedent.

As Dutch academic Marina Otero noted after her win of the 2022 Wheelwright Prize: "The huge scale of the operations of the data industry and its pervasiveness and increasing importance in the contemporary world — coupled with its openness to innovation and concurrent pressures to find better socio-ecological models — creates a fertile environment for experimentation and action."

Norman Foster Foundation and Holcim unveil Essential Homes prototype designs for Latin America

2024-06-14T13:24:00-04:00

The Norman Foster Foundation has unveiled details of its new Essential Homes prototype design with Holcim that will deliver low-cost options for emergency shelter in Latin America using low-carbon concrete and cement products in demonstration of the principles of a circular economy.

Image: courtesy Norman Foster Foundation

The prototypes, which are currently being displayed as part of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London, expand on a presentation made during last year's Venice Biennale and incorporate research performed by the Swiss materials manufacturer. The design has since morphed into a better scalable row house version that will be rolled out next year. The homes are said to be fully recyclable and showcase Holcim's proprietary ECOPact low-carbon concrete and ECOPlanet low carbon cement products.

Image: courtesy Norman Foster Foundation

Foster describes: "This project grew out of a workshop organized by the Norman Foster Foundation for young graduates devoted to the iss...

Oliver Wainwright on the 'elegant white steel and glass pavilion' crowned 2024 EU Mies van der Rohe Award winner

2024-04-30T11:48:00-04:00

A lightweight university study centre designed to be easily disassembled has won the prize for the best building in Europe. Longevity, permanence and a sense of immutability might be the ambition of most architects, but Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke would be delighted to see their building adapted and reconfigured, or ultimately dismantled and moved somewhere else altogether.

Wainwright reflects on the "impossibly slender" pavilion which was revealed as the winner of the 2024 EU Mies van der Rohe Award last week in an article that also includes the perspectives of the pavilion's architects, Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke.

Related on Archinect: University study pavilion wins the 2024 EU Mies van der Rohe Award with a reconfigurable design. Photo by Iwan Baan.

Located on the campus of the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, the pavilion has been designed to allow for variations of student activities within a flexible layout, described by the award organizers as a "counter-model to spaces of hierarchical knowledge transfer."

Another winning aspect is the hybrid structure's ability to be disassembled and remounted. Individual components are capable of reuse in line with a principle called the "future material depot," which contributes to its role in the circular economy.

Holcim and Zaha Hadid Architects team debuts second 3D printed concrete bridge concept

2024-01-14T08:00:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects has released details of a second collaborative effort with Holcim on a 3D printed bridge concept that was first debuted as part of the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.

The new ten-ton Phoenix design offers an evolution of the innovations seen in the previous Striatus bridge, the original blocks of which the team was able to recycle in the second iteration.

Image: Vincent Delesvaux

For the project, Holcim was able to deliver Phoenix with a 25% overall reduction in CO2 footprint compared to its earlier counterpart, thanks to the use of an updated ECOCycle circular technology and a special proprietary concrete ink that was also developed by the company. The construction was completed recently in Lyon, France, on the grounds of Holcim’s Innovation Hub. Its proponents are now citing it as a milestone for the design industry’s quest to develop low-carbon structural solutions at different scales.

Image: Holcim

Shajay Bhooshan, head of Zaha Hadid Architects' Computati...

Port Authority of NY & NJ reaches milestone with new low-carbon concrete standards

2023-06-29T14:09:00-04:00

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced earlier this month that it has reached a major milestone in one of the most ambitious low-carbon concrete programs of its kind among U.S. transportation agencies.

Originally introduced in September 2020, the Clean Construction Program aims to reduce embodied carbon, promote the circular economy, and reduce air pollution from construction across all of the Authority’s projects through a range of initiatives. They include the incorporation of LEED and Envision-equivalent standards, utilizing low-carbon concrete, collecting environmental data from contractors, facilitating pilot projects, waste matching for concrete, asphalt, and soil, and requiring low-emissions vehicles on site.

The agency took a major step forward by significantly strengthening its requirements to use sustainable concrete mixes in all future construction projects as part of its commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Related on Archinect: UN Secr...

MVRDV's new demountable science building has over 120,000 reusable components

2023-05-25T19:36:00-04:00

Construction of MVRDV’s Matrix ONE project, a laboratory and office building in the heart of Amsterdam Science Park, has been completed.

The six-story, 140,000-square-foot structure is the largest of seven buildings that now make up the Matrix Innovation Center, a site for scientists and entrepreneurs to develop sustainable solutions for current and future issues.

Image: MVRDV / © Daria Scagliola

As the main hub at the Center, Matrix ONE aims to be a guiding example to the other buildings at the Amsterdam Science Park. The building was made to be demountable, in which connections such as screws and bolts allow elements to be detached and reused. In addition, its floors are made using prefabricated concrete slabs with no fixed connections.

Image: MVRDV / © Daria Scagliola

The platform Madaster was used to provide a material passport system that registers all the materials and products incorporated in the building. It provides insight into the carbon dioxide storage for over 120,000 ...

Testbeds is giving discarded architectural mock-ups new life in New York's community gardens

2022-12-08T12:13:00-05:00

A new project from New York-based duo New Affiliates is making headlines in the Queens neighborhood of Edgemere, where architects Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb have invented a radical new way of reusing one of the design processes’ most wasteful customs – discarded architectural mock-ups.

With the help of Columbia GSAPP doctoral candidate Samuel Stewart-Halevy, the pair have begun a pilot program called Testbeds that takes the temporary structures and repurposes them as toolsheds for community gardens around the city.

Previously on Archinect: The Founders of NY-based New Affiliates Discuss How Their Love for Arguing Betters Their Work

Beginning with the generally underserved neighborhood located on the Rockaway peninsula, Testbeds has been experimenting with a new way of adapting the notion of a “circular economy” into the built environment. The program got off the ground in 2018 with the blessing of officials from the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation's GreenThumb program, u...

ETH Zurich students construct timber dome entirely from waste materials

2022-10-20T12:00:00-04:00

A group of research students at ETH Zurich has completed a timber geodesic dome constructed from nothing but demolition waste. The research group, led by assistant professor Catherine De Wolf of the university’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, sees the project as a demonstration of the potential for circular economics.

Photo credit: Catherine De Wolf

Photo credit: BuserHill Photography

Work on the project began in October 2021 when the group, titled the Circular Engineering for Architecture lab, gained permission to salvage materials from an old car depot scheduled for demolition. Through dismantling an entire floor of the building, the group salvaged OSB panels, wooden beams, steel girders, and plastic piping for use in the pavilion.

Photo credit: Catherine De Wolf

Photo credit: Anna Buser

According to the group, the decision to construct a geodesic dome from the waste materials was due to the shape’s stable, efficient, and elementary structural properties....

Food for thought on circular design and who should own the built environment

2022-10-11T12:43:00-04:00

Back in June, we covered news of research set to be undertaken at Penn State on the subject of embodied carbon in cities. The research, one of many stories this year focusing on embodied carbon, signals a growing awareness in academic and professional circles of the need to include whole-life perspectives on buildings when calculating their environmental impact: from conception and construction to demolition and reuse.

Given the sizeable 40% impact of the AEC sector on global carbon emissions, it is no surprise that conversations on embodied carbon, life-cycle analyses, and our attitude towards waste in buildings have also garnered mainstream attention.

This week, The New York Times published an article by freelance writer Jessica Camille Aguirre titled ‘How to Recycle a 14-Story Office Tower.’ While the title may evoke ideas of an IKEA-s...

UVA researchers develop 3D-printed structures made of soil and seeds

2022-07-29T17:36:00-04:00

A research team out of the University of Virginia (UVA) has developed a new innovative and sustainable approach to building that utilizes the power of 3D printing to create structures made of soil implanted with seeds.

The team consists of Ji Ma, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science; David Carr, a research professor in the university’s Department of Environmental Sciences; Ehsan Baharlou, an assistant professor in the UVA School of Architecture; and recent UVA graduate Spencer Barnes, who earned his Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering. Given the environmental benefits of integrating green spaces with buildings, the researchers wanted to investigate the possibility of developing complex structures made of natural materials themselves.

"Supported by the School of Architecture’s fabrication lab and a 3Cavaliers grant, Baharlou established an additive manufacturing fabrication system to 3D-print large s...

Check out the process behind Apex Plaza, the new tallest mass timber building on the East Coast

2022-05-05T16:17:00-04:00

William McDonough + Partners' new mass timber Apex Plaza project recently celebrated its completion in Charlottesville, Virginia. The 187,000-square-foot structure is now considered to be the largest such CLT project in the eastern United States.

Its completion is a major milestone for the use of the increasingly popular material in the U.S. and marks the end of a journey begun twenty years ago when the firm published a text from McDonough and EPEA International founder Michael Braungart outlining the “possibility of developing healthy and creatively interactive relationships between human settlements and the natural world.”

Construction images provided by the firm tell a narrative of its design features and the process behind McDonough's concepts of "Building like a Tree," "Design for Disassembly," and "The Five Goods." The timber products you can see below are said to be sustainably harvested and Cradle to Cradle-certifie...

IKEA is selling renewable energy to households, starting in Sweden

2021-08-17T13:44:00-04:00

Furniture and interiors giant IKEA has announced that it is branching into selling renewable energy to households, beginning with its Swedish market in September 2021. Titled STRÖMMA, the scheme will operate as a monthly electricity subscription that allows people to source energy from wind and solar power and use an app to track their electricity usage.

In addition, customers who use IKEA solar panels, which are available in 11 countries, will be able to track their own energy production through the app and sell back surplus energy. Following a rollout of the renewable energy offer in Sweden, IKEA is hoping to expand the service, as well as its solar panel products, to all IKEA markets worldwide.

When sourcing energy, IKEA is aiming to offer electricity from solar and wind sites which are five years old or less, in order to spur the construction of new clean energy sites. The initiative also forms part of IKEA’s broader mission to become “climate positive” by 2030, reducing more gr...

Innovators turn carbon dioxide and industrial waste into carbon-negative products

2019-06-26T15:38:00-04:00

Scientists from round the world are meeting in Germany to improve ways of making money from carbon dioxide. They want to transform some of the CO2 that’s overheating the planet into products to benefit humanity. They don’t claim the technology will solve climate change, but they say it will help. Carbon dioxide is already being used in novel ways to create fuels, polymers, fertilisers, proteins, foams and building blocks.

BBC environmental analyst, Roger Harrabin, details three novel ways to turn excess carbon dioxide into potentially profitable carbon-negative products: high-grade fertilizer from agricultural waste products; food-grade beverage carbonation and biogas from horse manure; and most interesting for the architecture and construction industry, building blocks made from the ash of a waste incinerator plant.

Blocks using the latter innovation by British firm Carbon8 Aggregates have already been used in the construction of the Renzo Piano-designed Shard tower in London, the tallest building in Western Europe.