The Edge in Amsterdam
A growing trend in architecture is constructing buildings with a ‘green’ ethos, but some do it better than others.
Not long ago, we wrote of data centres and their continued evolution towards energy efficiency and, ultimately, lower cost management.
With an emphasis on heat, in particular, the design of a data centre is as much about temperature flows as it is about storage capacity. Thus the race towards cooler climates.
For office blocks, it is a little less intensive, however, given the plethora of these buildings around the world, and the constant expansion and renovation that goes on in this area, innovation is proving key.
For example, One Angel Square in Manchester is laden with solar panels to help reduce energy costs. Elsewhere, in the US, the Bullitt Centre, which cost $30m to construct, is one of the ‘greenest’ commercial buildings in the world.
The Living Building Challenge is a venture in this area to encourage 100pc sustainable buildings: they can’t contribute any waste to the environment, rainwater must be the sole water source and their energy must be entirely generated on site.
But even beyond such stringent criteria, there are architects working on buildings that use space and energy in remarkably clever ways, reducing running costs and providing examples of how things could be built in the future.
In this regard, we’re talking the Bahrain World Trade Centre, which has three wind turbines intersecting the gap between the two main buildings.
The 225KW turbines are connected by skybridges, with up to 15pc of the towers’ entire energy consumption taken care of by the clever design.
This infographic from Euroffice.co.uk lists eight of the greenest office buildings in the world.
The Edge in Amsterdam via DennisM2/Flickr
