Bury me a building with a tree on top...

Wow, what a nice reflection from the windows...

But wait, what's this view? From the inside, that's a...huh!?!?? Is that a window-curtained loading ramp leading to (shudder) yet another friggin' environmentally friendly parking garage?*

Or is it another crazy ski jump from Julien De Smedt, although I doubt that's the case given the unfortunate launch directly into the window. With De Smedt's concepts, however, you never know...

A walkable, livable, enjoyable green roof? Why, I think it is?!?!

I. Want.

OK, this building is old hat to most in the blogosphere, but I couldn't resist a repost.

About two months ago, the first shots of the School of Art, Design & Media, in Nanyang, Singapore came out and were, well, were grainy and pretty blah. Now, however, you can really soak it in...

Designed by CPG Consultants Pte Ltd, the award-winning design is five stories tall and is made entirely of raw, unpainted concrete, cement-sand screeded (screeded is right, yes?) floors, natural timber railings and raw glass.

It begs the question: is it a building with landscape or a landscape with a building?

Light goes in, heat waves stay out. Simple. The internal water feature in the sunken courtyard also provides additional cooling, and affords the possibility of grey water reclamation. It's funny though, all I can think of doing is giving a grandiose speech on one of the palmed islands in the middle while throngs of people lined the upper railings. It would make a CRAZY amphitheater!

Via HERE:

Located at the junction of Nanyang Ave and Nanyang Drive, the new iconic School of Art, Design and Media is situated in a wooded valley right in the heart of the campus.

The design was conceived as 3 intertwining blocks that are apparent natural extensions of the ground. These blocks interweave to enclose a picturesque plaza and landscape. Major spaces such as the Auditorium, Media Studios, library and art galleries surround this outdoor activity node.

Tucked indoors are complementary facilities such as Stop Motion Studio, 3-D Hi-End Computer Graphics Studio, Soundstage, Sound Recording Studios, Audio Visual Editing Suites, Hi-End Digital Post Studio etc.

The highlight of the building is the verdant turfed roof which blends with the ground contour. Apart from its visual impact, the turfed roofscape is a functional space which is easily accessible via sidesteps along the roof edge, thereby allowing the rooftop to be a scenic outdoor communal space. Environmentally, it helps to lower the roof temperature and surrounding areas.

The facade design is a glass curtain wall in neutral grey colour. The remaining parts of the building comprised off-form concrete walls which eschew painting or external rendering works.

The external finish is reserved in its primary condition to maintain its design integrity and naturalness. When night beckons, the building lights up like a beacon that announces its warm presence. The interior lighting streams through the glass curtain walls to render the building a dynamic stage against the backdrop of the external landscape.

*For those of you that don't know this yet, NO parking garage, regardless of LEED points, is environmentally friendly. Urbanize properly and through away the keys!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

Time, time, time
See what's become of me...

Walking on flowers, permanently...

Concrete...blah.

That's my usual reaction. Just plain blah.

Sure, industrial concrete finishes in businesses and designer lofts are all the rage, but let's face it; no amount of acid finish, stamping or staining can warm up the feel of concrete to that of, say, a reclaimed wood plank floor salvaged from a 100-year old barn. Concrete is cold, unwelcoming and often times just plain boring, regardless of whatever faux tile finish or slate texture application you can find. Blah.

And while the concrete industry has made some tremendous advancements --from CERATECH's carbon reducing sustainable concrete to cement based composites like Syndecrete (they've even developed a self-cleaning concrete from Essroc that uses photocatalysis to scrub itself)-- when it comes to unique aesthetics, not many concrete floors can hold their ground.

Try as they might, they're still just plain old, cold concrete floors. Scraped and scratched, dyed and bleached, blah concrete floors.

One solution?

Bring in the design team from Transparent House, a 3D visualization studio that specializes in creating photorealistic 3D renderings of architectural designs. They're taking concrete to a whole new (see: beautiful) level...

Transparent House Team presents its vision of the classic flooring material – concrete.

We’ve created a way to refine a popular element of contemporary interior design such as polished concrete flooring. The design concept allows for application of any pattern to the surface either when pouring or afterwards when the concrete has set. The fine floral ornament promotes the clean and simple character of the space while adding a touch of warm and live contrast and highlighting the cold austerity of the material.

Now THAT's the farthest thing from blah I've seen in a while.

Check out more of Transparent House concrete HERE.

How does your garden grow? In transit?

Grown in Transit is a tremendous concept from the LifeSigns network, a web based portal for the Future Laboratory's extensive network of professionals working in the creative and branding industries. If you haven't already registered to read the LifeSigns material, now would be a good time to do so.

Each day, the LifeSigns team uploads trend-based stories and reports from a wiiiiiiiide range of events/trade shows/design outlets/solar systems. The material is very on-edge, fresh, and full of original content.

Sign up now and when you're approved (yes, you must be approved to read their content), you'll have full access to some amazing stuff.

The LifeSigns network's Grown In Transit:

This week, LifeSigns is continuing its menu of food trends from the Future Laboratory's new Food Futures Report.

Supermarkets and modern food transportation systems have sacrificed freshness and seasonality in favour of warehousing depots, bulk transportation and blemish-free produce. But a new attitude is emerging, with the creation of innovative ways of growing food in transit rather than refrigerating products into suspended animation.

Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Agata Jaworska's project Made in Transit, aims to eliminate the wasted time and trapped inventory in many supply chains by actually growing produce en route to the store. Jaworska's concept aims to move from best before, preservative packaging to ready by, cultivational packaging which consumers would open when the product was ready for consumption. Jaworska's first example would grow mushrooms on the way to the supermarket.

The instant a crop is removed from the ground or separated from its parent plant, a steady process of deterioration begins, says Jaworska. Methods to compensate for the loss of quality, taste and nutrients can only slow the process of deterioration down, but the result will never match what we have at the source of life. The grown-in-transit, concept enables growth along the way, to deliver absolute freshness and allow the consumer to harvest, their own food. The idea would also minimise the excess packaging, such as the plastic film and crates that protect delicate food items in transit. These are rarely re-used.

Award-winning chef Arthur Potts Dawson hopes to bring a community aspect to the trend with his veg barge, concept. He plans to create an aquatic allotment on one of the barges on Regent's Canal, adjacent to his Water House restaurant in Shoreditch, London.

The barge is an extension of the city-grown produce cultivated on the roof and in the front and back yards of Potts Dawson's Acorn House in the busy King's Cross area. It would service the restaurant by travelling up and down the canal as the herbs, fruits and vegetables grow. Potts Dawson is also keen to use the barge to serve the community, travelling into the Hackney borough to promote and sell locally-grown foods.

For more on this or other trends contact Hester Chan for copies of the Food Futures report or a ticket to the Food Futures Forum.

Holy Holmenkollen!!!

Every now and then a project comes along that makes you say, "How?" The design is breathtaking, the size is extreme and the appearance, near impossible. Well, the future of the Holmenkollen ski jump in Oslo, Norway is just that kind of project.

The grandiose project was won late last year in a open competition by Danish Architect, Julien De Smedt, and is now commissioned to be built for the 2011 World Ski Championships! What do you think? The new design is simply awe-inspiring.

The International Ski Federation had requested that an iconic structure be built for the competition and as you can see, De Smedt didn't disappoint. Given the rich history of skiing in Oslo --in addition to the 600,000+ tourists that visit the existing jump year after year-- it's easy to see that interest in the location and culture will only grow. The ISF should be quite happy with the future of Nordic sport in Norway.

The jump will be a cantilevered steel structure, eagerly capable of handling the massive weight and power of snow and wind. Near the grounding point of the cantilever, there will a union and restaurant for spectators, tourists and officials. Additionally, there will be a public viewing platform at the crest of the jump, allowing spectators to view the athletes as they launch from into the air. I can only imagine what that view will look like! And with the entire structure lit from within, surrounded in a glass-plate façade, I can imagine the the view from outside the jump will be just as, if not more, breathtaking. To top it off, the peak is cut horizontally to accommodate an additional viewing platform with a 360º panorama view over the Oslo city landscape.

Construction is expected to be completed in 2009.

JDS/Julien De Smedt Architects is a multidisciplinary office, located in Copenhagen, Brussels and Oslo, that focuses on architecture and design, from large scale urban planning to furniture and design.

Vertigo...

This was floating around work today from one of staff that frequents Dubai. It's a view from the top of the Burj Dubai, now the world's tallest building. It came with the following:

The attached photograph was taken from one of the tower crane platforms above the Burj Dubai this month. The Burj Dubai is still under construction and this photo shows it at a height of approximately 630 meters (2070 feet). Supposedly, it takes about 27 minutes travel time for a construction crane to hoist material from ground level to the top of present construction level.

It's probably one of the most talked about buildings in Dubai so I typically refrain from posting any additional details, but this vantage point was too difficult to resist.

Have a great weekend!

Great marketing...

Sustainable advertising is funny.

Back in a minute, I need to greenwash the floor...

I was watching a little television before bed last night and ran across a new series called Ax Men on the History Channel. It follows four logging crews through a season in the remote forests of northwest Oregon as they work in one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. As I watched, the little hippie inside of me silently shed a patchouli-scented tear as each tree was felled, then hauled up the mountain at breakneck speed (literally). The one-armed, prosthetically enhanced logger had defeated tree-after-old-growth-tree, and another house would soon begin construction.

After getting out of my morning shower the visions of falling timber stick stuck to the back of my head, so I decided to see what the show was doing in terms of sustainable practices. At the end of a long day, it sure looked like the Ax Men were simply clear-cutting the side of the mountain at random, but what did I know? I'm a mid-Western bike commuter with clean fingernails. He had, well, only five fingernails.

I googled and blogsearched, and while numerous interviews and reviews hint that the show is doing what it can to promote environmental stewardship, they don't, however, say how/why/who/when/what they're doing. There isn't any promotion of replanting, any exhibition of responsible forestry, or any environmental stewardship whatsoever.

Actually, the majority of the interviews seem to reiterate this comment made by one of the loggers, "The media has beat us up pretty badly, and I don't think a lot of people are really educated on how the woods are regulated."

We are doing something because we know environmental degradation is bad.

But what? What exactly are you doing? Who's watching you do it? Who recommended you to do it? Who's following up on how you did it or what affect it had on the environment?

***

As of late, questionable green promotions seem to be par for the course for the building, construction, and supply industries. And as far as the logging industry goes, they're acknowledgment of current environmental issues seems to be (in their opinion) adequate enough to ward off any further environmental stewardship. So, if that's how they want to play the game, who or how can we keep tabs on what they're doing? More importantly, how can we keep tabs on what we, as consumers, are buying?

Well, wood suppliers often make claims that their products come from "managed" or "sustainable" forests, but without independent certification, there is no way to really know. Increasingly, such claims are used as a marketing ploy to "greenwash" material that came from destructive forestry practices. That’s why it’s important to buy certified wood, but the fact that a wood product is "certified" does not mean that it comes from an ecologically-well managed forest. There are now various types of forest certification (see below), and most do not have meaningful environmental standards, enforcement mechanisms, or methods of tracking the wood through the supply chain to keep out illegally-logged material and prevent misrepresentation.

The only forest certification system that enjoys the support of environmental groups worldwide is that of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which is independent, non-profit, and has a mechanism for tracking wood from the forest to the consumer – from first cut to your kitchen. The USGBC only recognizes FSC certification as evidence of the sustainability of a wood product. So, if you want verification that the wood you are purchasing came from a truly well-managed forest, demand FSC-certified material, and demand proper documentation.


Now here’s the tricky part. The fact that a company has FSC certification does not mean that what you are being sold is FSC-certified (I know, it’s complicated). Why? Well, many companies that have FSC "Chain of Custody" (COC) certification, which gives them the right to buy and sell FSC-certified wood even though they only sell a minute amount of FSC-certified wood. This is particularly the case in the wood flooring industry.

So buyer beware: Most FSC-certified wood products have on-product FSC labels, but watch out. If you are purchasing what you believe is FSC-certified wood but there are no FSC logos on the product packaging, it most likely is not certified, no matter what the rest of the information provided by the manufacturer or supplier might indicate. Some companies will even use the FSC logo on product samples, but ship uncertified material to fill your order. To verify the FSC-certified status of a wood product that does not bare the FSC logo, demand not only the supplier's COC certificate, but also an invoice or receipt detailing the FSC-certified status of each product on an individual line-item basis. If the invoice's line-item doesn't say "FSC-certified," the material is not certified. If the supplier gives you the run around, drop him/her like fallen timber.

Examples of questionable certification systems include:

SFI - Sustainable Forestry Initiative - Sustainable Flooring
• Funded and dominated by the timber industry
• Weak environmental protections
• Allows conversion of natural forests (including old-growth) into tree farms
• No credible Chain of Custody to keep out illegal wood

CSA - Canadian Standards Association
• Allows large-scale clearing of old-growth
• Fails to protect First Nations

PEFC - Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification
• Weak environmental standards
• No credible Chain of Custody
• Mutually recognizes virtually all forest certification systems, including SFI and CSA
• PEFC wood could come from almost any source

ISO - International Standards Organization
• Standards address manufacturing practices, not forest management

IBAMA - Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources
• Program of the Brazilian government
• Low environmental standards, poorly enforced
• No Chain of Custody

None of the above forest certification systems enjoy the support of the environmental community. The FSC, on the other hand, is supported by major international conservation groups such as Greenpeace, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Rainforest Action Network, and many others.

So next time you're out and about or even spec-ing a new building, look for the FSC stamp and feel a little better about your purchase. You inner hippie need not cry, well, as much.