Microflat // London // England

This Microflat building is designed by a special architect group who specialize in such structures - The Microflat Company. The special thing about this building (and the company's other structures of such type), is that the micro apartments it contains are all pre-fabricated, thus making the building not only practical and good looking, but also pretty sustainable.

As the above picture shows, the apartments it contains are indeed in the micro range, but are designed in such a way, that despite their size, they are at least just as comfortable as standard studio apartments (this one is 2/3 the size of an average one-room apartment). Combining such pre-fab apartments to a larger flat structure, allows the building to have a really special exterior, as seen on the below picture and the first one.

Glitnir Bank HQ // Reykjavik // Iceland

The Glitnir Bank HQ project is one that dates back to the year 2006, but still, an utmost interesting project. It is designed by the Danish architectural firm, CEBRA. The building consists of 14,000 m2 space for the headquarters, 5950 m2 residential space and 66,000 m2 multi-use space (shops, offices, etc.). 

The building is characterized by a very interesting ice-cave-like structure. An exterior with wooden panels resembling a clear cube construction, and an interior that breaks the box into a cave-like system. The building itself is located by the coastline, which furthermore dramatizes the building's unique shape.

TAV Station // Florence // Italy

This is a project for a new High-Speed Rail station for the infamous city of Florence. As some of you know, Florence is a very well preserved historical city, with architecture that dates back to the earliest Renaissance, and designing a new, modern railway station in such a historical city has been a great challenge for the competition winning architects, Foster and Partners.

The platform level in this station is located 25 meters below ground level, and itl has a length of 454 meters and a width of 52 meters. In order to reduce energy consumption, the roofing is made of glass, which allows natural light during daytime, while also having a temperature regulation system, that allows the station to be naturally ventilated, and thus saving it from extra energy consumption. On this glass roof system, photovoltaic cells are furthermore installed to additionally contribute to the buildings sustainable regulations. 

 

Hamburg ECO City // Hamburg // Germany

The historic German Hamburg-Harburg harbour has announced this project. The project consists of a redevolopment of the old harbour, to a ultramodern sustainable city quarter. The plan is designed by Tec Architecture together with the international engineer company, ARUP. This project focuses mainly on sustainability and one could say, that this is perhaps the most sustainable development project at the moment (it scores excellently on all three of the new green building rating systems - LEED, BREEAM and DGBN).

Through the use of modern green technologies, environmentaly-friendly building materials and efficient facades, this project is expected to save the inhabitants of this new city quarter up to 30% on electric and heating consumption. Wind energy will aid the inhabitants to achieve this, by supplying the ECO City with 10% of its estimated electric energy consumption. 

Tec Principal Sebastian Knorr explains: “ECO CITY represents a synergistic approach to urban development. By working in close cooperation with all the stakeholders and taking into consideration the immediate environmental context of the project, we’ve created a different type of sustainable, creative-industrial complex. We hope that iconic ECO CITY project becomes a model for sustainable urban development.”

The Shard // London // England

The Shard - A new skyscraper project for the London skyline by the infamous Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Well actually, the project in itself isn't quite new - it was proposed a few years ago, but was put on hold at the time, but now, it looks like it finally will be completed and construction has already begun. The 306 m tall, 72 story skyscraper is expected to be ready by the year 2012, and it will at completion be the tallest building in Western Europe, beating its competitors The Canary Wharf Tower also in London and The Commerz Bank Tower in Frankfurt, Germany by only a few meters. 

The skyscraper will serve as a multi functional building, and will contain offices, luxury apartments, a luxurious hotel, cafés and restaurants and even two larger winter gardens. From the sustainable angle, the building is designed in such a way, that the building is naturally ventilated, and thus its use for air conditioning during the hot summer months is unnecessary. 

The skyscraper construction is made of a good old steel and curtain wall system, but at the very top of the building, the curtain wall system is detached, which creates a dramatic effect at the top point, as if the building disappears in the sky. This open top construction is also what allows the building to have natural ventilation.

Harbour House // Antwerp // Belgium

This somewhat different building is Zaha Hadid's winning proposal for a harbour administration building. This ship-shaped creation has a total height of no less than 46 m, with a total space of 12,700 m2, filled with 500 working spaces. The cost of this dazzling structure? 31.5 million euro. Now the reason why the old building bellow the newer ship-shaped one still remains, is because it was to be preserved, thus making a construction of a new structure on the site frighteningly challenging, but obviously Zaha Hadid took the challenge and completed it with style, creating a very eyecatching new structure, literary on top of the old. 

Oslo Central Station // Oslo // Norway

This futuristic and visionary railway station in Oslo is designed by the Norwegian-based SPACE GROUP. The goal of this project, is to create one of Europe's most High-Tech and modern railway stations. It is not the first project of its type (projects regarding modernizations of railway stations), but it is expected to be one of the first completed. Construction is expected to begin in 2013 and expected to end between the years 2018 and 2023. The construction costs are estimated to be around €361 million. 

The project's 80,000 m2 are to room station facilities, offices, a hotel tower, shops, conference rooms, restaurants and bistros and an open event space. The Oslo Central Station was once the heart of the Norwegian capital, but time has apparently altered its role in the city, which is why the SPACE GROUP architects are attempting to revive the city's station to once more be a social center. The architecture of the project has a sort of modernized Gothic church sort of character, making some areas of the station seem almost like the interior of a church (notice the above picture).