HOW ARE ARCHITECTS DESIGNING FOR A CHANGING WORLD?

From floating houses to smog absorbing towers, architects around the world are taking on the many issues surrounding our changing climate. In order to show unique and innovative ways in which you can approach the vast topic of global warming, arch out loud has collected a series of projects in an online gallery.

Check out the reference projects below and propose your own ideas for the WARMING 2020!

PREVENT

TYPE // HOME - Studio Komma and Studio Kees Marcelis re-imagine 14 out of service cargo ships as homes in a public park. Lifted onto land, the maritime relics will save upfront energy by avoiding demolition and new construction as well as ongoing power usage by harvesting energy from the sun via solar panel arrays on the ship decks.

TYPE // GREENHOUSE TOWER - XTU architects‘ latest high rise proposal is an algae-covered structure that incorporates a water recycling facade system and green houses occupying the top of each tower.

TYPE // HOUSING - Before Everybody Leaves to Mars, is a conceptual proposal that focuses on the adaptive reuse of abandoned grain silos as housing units. The construction business is a large contributor to global warming through concrete and steel waste, materials that have a potent impact of environmental degradation.

TYPE // LANDFORM FARM - Buildings take up space, therefore occupying potential farmlands. Alexis Dornier investigates the potential of a building's roof to become an agricultural element.The rice campus holds a number of programs above and below its tiered farm-able roof structure. A fully intact irrigated system facilitates the growth of local fruits and vegetables.

TYPE // MODULAR TOWER - Precht has designed a timber skyscraper concept that combines modular housing with vertical farming. Prefabricated A-frame housing modules are made from cross-laminated timber. Living spaces would combine with garden spaces for food growth.

TYPE // LANDFORM FARM - X-architecture has designed a winery embedded within the landscape of the vineyards, the thermal mass of the soil is used to optimize the cooling of the building, and its north facing facade avoids direct solar gain, reducing energy waste.

TYPE // TIMBER MICRO HOME - Studio Marcovermeulen is studying an entire house that can be delivered using one truck. One of the advantages of these tiny CLT homes is their lightweight structure. Extra modules are plugged into the main core to customize the tiny homes with additional elements.

TYPE // RECYCLED PRINTED HOMES - Wirada Daengpiam and Aunnop Kaewphanna have designed disaster relief housing that cleans up the ocean while producing a valuable building material. The current amount of plastic garbage in the ocean is causing problems for Earth's marine biodiversity. This plastic waste can be recycled without losing material value. After grinding and melting down plastic waste, a robotic 3D-printing arm constructs structure quality three-story homes.

TYPE // TIMBER STADIUM - Zaha Hadid Architects' wood structure stadium will form the centerpiece of an eco park development. The design embodies low carbon construction methods with almost every element made of sustainably sourced timber. The arena aims to be carbon neutral or even carbon negative with of on-site renewable energy generation.

TYPE // BIODEGRADABLE HOUSING - To Rest the Land reconceptualizes sustainability by envisioning a home designed to be deliberately abandoned and re-consumed by its environment, feeding and recognizing the perpetual cycle of life and death. The structure is both a home and a cultural device, each successive generation passing crucial knowledge to the next through the act of rebuilding.

TYPE // HOTEL - Snøhetta designed the first Powerhouse hotel just above the Arctic Circle. The hotel is the first building to follow the energy positive Powerhouse standard in a Northern climate. It reduces yearly energy consumption by 85% compared to a modern hotel, but also produces its own energy, a beneficial achievement in its arctic environment.

TYPE // HOUSING - The Element House is a modular building constructed from structurally insulated panels. It is designed to operate independently from public utilities by integrating passive systems and on-site energy-generation. The house is stripped down to its basic components and implements vertical skylights, solar chimneys, operable windows, and interlocking cladding.

REACT

TYPE // FLOATING COMMUNITY - Bjarke Ingels Group has plans for a sustainable floating city that would house up to 10,000 people while producing zero waste. The self-sufficient community will extract humidity from the air and desalinate seawater. Food would be harvested from small floating farms and under water via aquaculture.

TYPE // TRANSPORTABLE HOME - Bubble Home is an alternative to a mobile home, with two boxes that contain basic needs that are easily moved from one place to another. It can be installed in a camp ground, a garden, a square or inside of an existing building. The boxes are covered in photovoltaic solar panels to provide energy and the home was designed to float, answering the need of rapid adaptability to emergency situations.

TYPE // COMMUNITY - Reincarnation Network is a proposal from students at the Moscow Institute of Architecture focuses on preserving local context and traditions within a fishing community in Mumbai while giving the community a new life for future years to come. The proposal is comprised of a variety of flexible, easily erected and transformable modules that are elevated above seas level on an urban framework of stilts. A system of breakwaters is erected to protect the neighborhood from waves and floods.

TYPE // IMAGINED FUTURE - Design studio Superflux built a vision of a typical Singapore home in year 2219 that responds to extreme weather conditions. In the apartment, visitors are greeted by a kayak – an essential in a city where rising sea levels have caused the streets to flood. Roll down aluminium shutters protect windows and the home during intense storms.

TYPE // FIRE WATCHTOWER - Amazonian Watchtower is sited in the Amazon Rainforest, which is called the “Lungs of the World”, as it supplies over 20% of the entire world’s oxygen. This residence in the trees is created from a kit of parts that can come together based on any tree layouts in the forest. The volunteers who come to occupy this watchtower home act as a neutral delegate between the government and indigenous people.

TYPE // IMAGINED FUTURE - Nick Stath illustrates the disastrous effects of rising sea levels in a not so distant future. The illustrated story presents a somber picture where homes have been washed away, a world where people have returned to being nomadic in order to escape the frequent flooding.

TYPE // REEF REBUILDER - GXN innovation, an independent research subsidiary of architecture firm 3XN, looks at the damaging effects of climate change on coastal habitats. Researchers developed an oyster-based adhesive which underwater drones would mix with ocean floor sands, creating a binder to create and repair reef structures.

TYPE // ARCTIC REBUILDER - Yiyang Xu and Jingyi Ye from National Taiwan University developed the design for the Arctic Saver Tower. Water is captured by submerged rotating units and freezes when units rotate above the surface and are exposed to cold air. The project aims to protect the polar glaciers and extend the winter season in the Arctic.

TYPE // HOUSING - XTU latest fantastical proposal looks at life after oil and what to do with all the offshore platforms that have been built in the last century. Mankind’s appetite for these fossil fuels has had a tremendous impact on the natural environment. This project imagines the industrial monoliths transformed into poetic, habitable and exotic projects.

TYPE // PURIFICATION TOWER - Architecture studio Znera has developed a concept for a network of 100-metre high towers that would absorb smog and clean Delhi's air, the most polluted in the world. The proposal envisions a grid of towers with filtration pods, capturing pollutants at the base of each tower and circulating clean air using propellers at the top. Each building can create a 1.2 mile radius of semi-clean air.

TYPE // IMAGINED FUTURE - XTU architects envisions life in the year 2050 when Earth has become uninhabitable due to rising temperatures, increasingly volatile weather and unbreathable air. In a bid to escape, humankind takes to the skies. Inspired by zeppelin cargo ships, the proposal imagines cloud-like super structures housing cities of the future as they drift over earth. The ‘architecture of aerostats’ hovers in the earth’s atmosphere thanks to the use of helium gas to lift the structures that include plankton greenhouses, moisture sensors, and epiphyte forests.

TYPE // PURIFICATION TOWER - Residents of Delhi are breathing about 25 times more toxic air than the permissible limit and Studio Symbiosis proposes an air cleaning tower to tackle the issue. Aũra uses the principles of aerodynamics with two main chambers: one to speed up the air intake, and one to clean the air and send it back outside. The towers takes polluted air in from its base structure, and exhales purified air out from its top.

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