Open Plan: The Latest Architecture and News

Perkins+Will‘s VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre in Vancouver, BC is designed to meet the Living Building Challenge, the most rigorous set of requirements of sustainability. Formally and functionally, it encompasses the goals of environmentally and socially conscious design. The building is an undulating landscape of interior and exterior spaces rising from ground to roof level and providing a vast surface area on which vegetation could grow, thus reoccupying the land on which the building sits with the landscape. The building also features numerous passive and active systems that reuse the site’s renewable resources and the building’s own waste.

More photos after the break, including a video about the project!

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The project proposal for the first CTBUH international student design competition by Ajmona Hoxha and Elis Vathi aims to redefine the gap created between the two extreme social classes of India as the widening income gap between the rich and the poor over the years has raised fears of a social backlash. Since it is highly noticed that the difference between the rich and the poor is displayed not only in the social life but at a major grade on the physical environment, there is a need for redirecting social organization by creating a new environment. Displacement of the concentrated power of the narrow rich circles to wider masses would be achieved by strong physical means. More images and project description after the break.

CAAT Studio shared with us their design for a media complex located in the main cultural zone of Tehran. Their goal is to show that the human itself, acts as a media in the project. During the day, the presence of humans can make the project alive by moving towards different parts of it such as amphitheatre on the roof and other spaces. More images and architects’ description after the break.