This timber net-zero home is giving low energy homes a new and deeper meaning

For the past 10 years, PAD Studio has been conducting a study on the true environmental impact of low-energy homes. The studio has been studying the New Forest House for the past decade. The home is located within an 18.5-acre plot, which is situated adjacent to ancient woodland and heath, in the New Forest National Park. The building was carefully constructed to ensure that minimal disturbance was caused to the surrounding site, as well as the site’s sensitive landscape. The residence features the main house and a guest annex.

Designer: PAD Studio

The results of the decade-long study were quite interesting indeed. According to the results, the New Forest House is a 97% less expensive house to run as compared to a house built in accordance with 2021 building standards. The house utilizes 110% less energy as compared to a home powered by gas. The five-bedroom home is literally located in the middle of a forest. It has been built from timber, and has a rather simple design, allowing the nature surrounding it to truly shine through. The home also has a natural swimming hole and a self-contained guest annex.

The glazed elevations of the home feature timber louver shutters that maximize solar gain. The entire home has been topped with green roofing and has been amped with high levels of insulation to create a tight envelope. It is sealed and airtight, which holds the heat from the ground source heat pump, and has a mechanical ventilation heat recovery system. The home also features solar panels, thermal panels to heat water, and a rainwater harvesting system. The New Forest Home manages to be a net-zero home with carbon dioxide emissions that range from -2.46 to -0.76 annually.

The New Forest Home was built in accordance with the owner’s wish to have a home that lives within the landscape and supports the natural world. The green roof of the home functions as an ecological habitat. The swimming pond is a neat place for birds and insects to gather together, including the protected kingfisher. The thoughtfully constructed home is a beautiful and well-designed addition to the forest. It is tucked away in the trees and is surrounded by native grass, giving indoor-outdoor living a new and deeper meaning.

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This brutalist concrete villa in New Delhi boasts a ramp-like cascading green roof

Nestled in hot and hectic New Delhi, India, is a beautiful concrete home with a majestic terraced roof, rising up like a gentle wave from the landscaped ground. Called Villa KD45, the imposing villa was designed by Studio Symbiosis for a large joint family, that wanted a home that could hold its own on an angular property surrounded on three sides by other villas. With its rather unique form, impressive green roof, and brutalist-like vibe, Villa KD45 does just that!

Designer: Studio Symbiosis

“In urban settings, there is a disconnect between the user and nature. With this project we are looking at creating green urban living, to rekindle the relationship of the residents with nature in their immediate surroundings,” said Studio Symbiosis.

Occupied by an extended family of eight members, the home includes a rather impressive garden and was built while taking into consideration the large trees surrounding it. The trees in fact aided in the construction of the garden, owing to their tactile location which influenced the home’s positioning at the northeast corner. The roof of the home cascades down in a rather ramp-like form, scattered with steps, that hold concrete planters. The terrace also features a landscaped garden, that provides lovely views of the neighborhood park.

The ground floor of the home has been lowered a little, while the upper level is cantilevered, to provide shade against direct sunlight. The first floor has been amped with windows at angular recesses to minimize the heat gain. These precautions are necessary since Delhi can get supremely hot during the summertime, reaching unbearable temperatures. The plants on the rooftop reduce heat gain as well. The ground floor houses the double-height kitchen, dining, and living area. They serve as spaces for the family to gather and spend some quality time. Sliding doors create an alluring indoor-outdoor connection between this section and the garden.

A rather imposing floating staircase joins the living area to the first floor, followed by a mezzanine with a glass balustrade that allows the two spaces to remain visually connected. Another rather interesting feature of the home is a swing seat tucked away in a corner of one of the first-floor bedrooms. It looks out onto a tree canopy and is a rather cozy space to grab some me-time in.

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This floating structure in Rotterdam is the world’s largest + most sustainable office

Dutch architects Powerhouse Company has designed the largest floating office building in the world! Located at the Rijnhaven port on the Maas River in Rotterdam, it’s been rightly named the Floating Office Rotterdam. It is a prime example of large-scale ultra-sustainable construction on city waters. Defined as a “climate-resilient office design”, if the sea levels ever rise due to climate change, the office will float instead of sinking!

The energy-positive structure “was a very challenging commission and we approached it in an integrated way,” said Nanne de Ru, founder of Powerhouse Company.

Designer: Powerhouse Company

The circular office features public facilities such as a restaurant and a large outdoor terrace with a floating pool in the Maas river! Massive 6x3m floor-to-ceiling windows and balconies on every floor provide stunning views of the surroundings, as well as easy access to the outdoors, and some fresh air. Employees can even relax, and unwind, or get some work done on the spacious deck located outside while being completely surrounded by water.

The interiors are a calming melange of multiple wooden surfaces, which create an aura of peace and tranquility, thereby reducing workplace stress. The building, itself, is also constructed from wood, creating a minimum carbon footprint. The entire structure is supported by a floating body comprising fifteen concrete barges, that are pre-tensioned with tension cables. The in-situ liquid pipes in the concrete use the water in the port, to cool the office!

The floating office is also solar-powered. The roof features 870 square meters of PV panels, which actually generate more power than the office requires, so the excess power is then supplied to the city! The roof is quite an integral part of the office space since it also serves as a ‘green roof’. It holds sedum vegetation, and also 2000 herb plants, greatly encouraging biodiversity.

“As the world’s climate changes, extreme weather events and rising sea levels present new challenges for architects,” said CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation Patrick Verkooijen. “Embedding resilient features into a design before disaster strikes not only makes economic sense but it can also help us to mitigate against climate change,” he finished.

Besides being a circular, sustainable, and energy-efficient structure, the Floating Office Rotterdam also means to be a source of inspiration for the world of architecture. It hopes to inspire others to “future-proof their infrastructure”!

FOR has received the BREEAM Excellent sustainability certificate and also the ‘Consciously Building’ certificate, and is truly one of the most sustainable offices in the world.

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Stackable prefabricated modules are here to create futuristic LEGO-inspired buildings

PolyBloc is a prefabricated, modular housing solution designed to confront the demands of rapid urbanization and globalized lifestyles.

As the ways we work and live evolve, so do the ways we confront architecture. In direct response to rapid urbanization and the fall of the nuclear family, city architecture, in particular, is seeing major changes. In collaboration with pioneering companies who share their goal of “reimagining today’s habitat,” Paris-based architecture studio Cutwork developed PolyBloc. Designed as a prefabricated building system that implements industrial production and modular construction, PolyBlock is a “means [of] confronting the rising housing crisis.”

Designer: Cutwork

Noting the world’s inevitable pull towards shared spaces and mobile lifestyles, the creatives behind PolyBloc set out with the aim of revolutionizing urban architecture. Initially conceived as PolyRoom, a prefabricated single-room, 21-square-meter (226-square-foot) unit defined by its flexibility and multi-use nature, PolyBloc marks the studio’s larger-scale progression.

Focusing on the reproduction value and modularity of PolyRoom, Cutwork went about developing PolyBloc as a means of “creating adaptive, flexible housing solutions in different contexts, from urban to rural.” Adaptive and flexible in its very purpose, each PolyRoom is outfitted with concealed, multi-use pieces of furniture that save and create space for growing needs.

Designed to be a centralized room without an established purpose, PolyRoom takes cues from Japanese design concepts like ‘washitsu’ and ‘tatami room,’ design modes that reconfigure spaces to accommodate residents’ needs. With this in mind, each module comes stocked with multifunctional furniture like disappearing beds, foldable storage cabinets, and telescopic rail systems that transition partitions and doors to create more floor space.

To further each module’s appeal to cohabitation and multi-usability, PolyRoom is outfitted with living roofs and facades that utilize automatic irrigation systems to embrace different cities’ unique biodiversity. Finding flexibility and multifunctionality in a modular building method, PolyBloc is composed of modules that stack together like LEGO building blocks.

The PolyRoom units from Cutwork essentially can be constructed in bulk and stacked together to form full-sized residential complexes in different cities much quicker than traditional building methods allow. Forward-thinking in their creative process and mission, Cutwork explains, “It’s not only about building objects and spaces; it’s about crafting the systems to build [objects and spaces]–systems to help solve the challenges ahead.”

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This modern eco-home features a garden roof and integrates the surrounding forest into its design!

Hugging House is a modern eco-home architecture concept that features a garden roof and incorporates the natural landscape of the land into its layout.

Noticing the devasting changes that come with climate change, most modern architects look to the natural world for inspiration to help preserve it. Whether that means building a self-sustainable home using a ‘passive house’ construction method or incorporating biophilia into the design scheme, architects interpret earth’s many ecosystems in exciting and different ways.

Cuba-based Veliz Arquitecto conceptualized a modern eco home called Hugging House that integrates the land’s rolling terrain and surrounding trees into the layout of the building.

Hugging House is a large, bi-level, cantilevered home located somewhere with dense forestry and overhead treetop canopies. The two sections that comprise Hugging House merge together as if in an embrace. Concrete slabs comprise the home’s surrounding driveway that leads to the ground level and outdoor leisure areas.

Veliz Arquitecto’s Hugging House is still only in its conceptual phase, but if brought to life, Hugging House’s location would be fully incorporated into the layout of the home. Describing the design in his own words, Veliz Arquitectos notes, “We have taken advantage of the slopes of the land in order to create visual connections at different heights with the existing vegetation and beyond the landscape, as well as [used] the premises with which we always try to characterize the project.”

Choosing to merge the outdoor areas with the home’s entire layout led to some exciting design choices including a garden roof and abstract overall frame. The Hugging House’s garden roof is located in a terrace-like enclosure where residents can lay out and feel as close to nature as if they were sitting on the ground below.

In addition to the garden roof, Hugging House features a swimming pool, fire pit, and concrete driveway. On the inside, residents and guests can enjoy a living room, kitchen, dining room, bathroom, and laundry room.

Designer: Veliz Arquitecto

The inside also features garden walls and ceilings to further the home’s biophilic design principle. 

Upstairs, natural stone walls give the bedroom a sultry, cozy appeal.

The dining area and bar room feature bright and dark design elements respectively. 

A floating staircase brings guests from the living room to the second floor. 

This passive house features a living green roof that merges the home with its forested surroundings!

Hill House is a passive house designed and constructed by Snegiri Architects with a living green roof that blends the home seamlessly with its natural woodland surroundings.

Passive houses and green homes are rising in popularity, cropping up across the globe, and slowly, but steadily establishing a new standard for residence architecture. Photovoltaic panels, living roofs, and rainwater collection systems are some of the most common sustainable and energy-efficient elements that grace the outside and inside of such homes. Snegiri Architects, a firm based in Saint Petersburg, Russia, finished work on a passive residence called Hill House, complete with a living green roof that merges the home with the nearby forest.

Building new homes, especially passive houses, in dense woodlands without felling trees is a near-impossible task unless you incorporate them into the home’s layout. Managing to preserve the forested lot’s preexisting trees, Snegiri Architects built Hill House to be entirely integrated into the surrounding environment. Plotted with diverse plant life and shrubbery, Hill House’s living green roof sprawls with a grass carpet filled with stonecrop and dwarf plants including chamomile and sedum.

The gradual incline of Hill House’s green roof conceals the home’s structural presence, bringing the home inch by inch into the bordering woods. The rest of Hill House’s exterior strikes a balance between black-stained wood-paneled facades and natural, unstained wood-paneled eaves. With this contrast, the home blends naturally into its surroundings, but its interiors remain bright with light window accents.

From top to bottom, the Hill House undoubtedly reaches the energy efficiency standard set by passive house building techniques. The terrace and most of the rooms are oriented towards the home’s sunny side to collect the maximum amount of sunlight during the day and energy-saving windows prevent the heated or cooled air from leaving the home. The home is also ventilated with air recovery, and Swedish slab, monolith, mineral wool, and linseed oil-soaked larch all provide the home with insulation from its foundation to its roof.

Designer: Snegiri Architects

The rolling green roof of this modern art museum was built with to merge art preservation with futuristic technology!

On one hand, museums are known for keeping paintings and artifacts of ancient civilizations with preservation being the goal. On the other, more modern museums incorporate some of the most advanced technology of today into their exhibitions to introduce the exciting possibilities for the art of tomorrow. Enacting his own preferred modern technology to conceptualize a modern art museum for the city of Tehran, architect Milad Eshtiyaghi hopes to evolve this relationship between today’s technology and the preservation of Islamic and Iranian art.

Known for designing bold, daredevil retreats stationed on the edge of mountain summits and cliffsides, Eshtiyaghi maintained the same mythical energy for his most recent rendering of Tehran’s Modern Art Museum. From an aerial viewpoint, Eshtiyaghi’s museum does not form any distinct shape, progressing past geometric, sharp angles for a gleaming white roof that slopes and bulges like a white tarp covering a wild landscape. Modern museums are generally known for their conceptual architecture, a form Milad Eshtiyaghi executes well considering his wide array of escapist hideaways. The green space that surrounds Eshtiyaghi’s museum tightens the museum’s abstract energy with rolling green roofs that mimic the overlapping lines of soundwaves, offering a place to rest on its manicured lawns.

Inside, the shapelessness of Tehran’s Modern Art Museum provides an eccentric stage for contemporary art exhibits. The museum’s tower wing spirals above the rest of the exhibition space, bringing guests to the museum’s highest vantage point via a web of winding, interconnected staircases. Etched along the tower’s facades and the museum’s main lobby, circular holes infuse the museum’s industrial interior with plenty of sunlight. Throughout the museum’s interior and exterior spaces, Eshtiyaghi hoped to communicate the significance of modern technology when used for art preservation, merging the age-old practice of museum work with today’s technological advancements.

Designer: Milad Eshtiyaghi

Without any distinct shape, Eshtiyaghi’s Modern Art Museum welcomes contemporary art, for all its abstract, shapeless glory.

Like many modern museum spaces, Eshtiyaghi’s Modern Art Museum features an outdoor plaza and interconnected green spaces.

Various vantage points puncture the museum’s facades.

The museum’s tower spirals above slopes and bulges of the museum’s white roof.

Holes are dotted across facades to bring in natural sunlight to the museum’s industrial interior.

 

Rolling green roofs mimic the flow of soundwaves.

Inside, staircases interconnect to form webs of walkways for guests to explore.

These bee-friendly living roofs on the Leicester city bus stops is part of their goal to become carbon-neutral by 2030!

Everything from honey bee colonies to honey production is on the decline. Even walking down the street, the bees crawling on the sidewalks seem to look weaker and weaker as the days get hotter and pollution only increases. Air pollution, drought, pesticides, and global warming all contribute to the overall decline in bee populations across the world. Doing something about it, city officials of Leicester, United Kingdom have installed green roofs on top of their bus stops called Living Roofs or Bee Bus Stops to attract pollinators like bees and to make the city a little greener.

The bee roofs will cover thirty bus stops around the city of Leicester with a mix of wildflowers and sedum plants, luring in pollinators like butterflies and honey bees. Conceived as a mode of climate resilience, the Bee Bus Stops will help bring in more biodiversity into an otherwise declining cityscape and absorb rainwater that falls on the roof to produce a natural, blooming garden atop each roof. In cities across the globe, concrete can get monotonous. Integrating natural gardens into the city fabric will help break up that monotony with some greenery, birds, and insects. Introducing Bee Bus Stops to the city of Leicester will also help mitigate the effects of urban heat islands by absorbing some of the heat during the summer months, collecting air pollutants in the process.

Built on a ten-year contract with Leicester’s city council and Clear Channel UK, the Bee Bus Stops will feature solar panels once the city has the means to attach them to every bus stop for green energy and smart lighting. Leicester’s deputy city mayor councilor Adam Clarke leads the city’s environment and transportation initiatives. On the city’s future goals of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030, Clarke explains the potential of the Living Roofs to bring them there,

“The new, modern shelters will be great for passengers and the mix of solar power and living roofs is another step forward for our ambition to be a carbon-neutral and climate-adapted city by 2030. The new shelters will also be a perfect complement to our work to deliver a new, carbon-neutral bus station at St. Margaret’s.”

Designer: Leicester City Council

Thirty bus stops across the city of Leicester have tacked on wooden boxes to their roofs, attracting pollinators like butterflies and honey bees.

Leicester’s Living Roofs mark the beginning of the city’s green initiative to become carbon-neutral by 2030.

This sustainable office building uses passive energy practices and promotes biodiversity with their green roof!

CABI is an international nonprofit committed to solving problems related to agriculture and the environment through fact-based scientific expertise, improving the lives of people across the globe– those who work for CABI needed an office that reflected their mission. Taking on the project, Scott Brownrigg designed a sustainable headquarters based in the UK that features a rolling green roof and encourages biodiversity through highly energy-efficient building practices.

CABI’s new headquarters in Wallingford hones in on passive sustainability as its main focus. The building’s location and orientation were specifically chosen to minimize solar gains, allowing for shade in the warmer months and plenty of sunshine during the colder months. To achieve natural air ventilation, the building dons a perforated facade, allowing cool air to flow throughout the interior day and night, and then heat recovery ventilation pre-warms fresh air during the winter months. While this means for maintaining natural airflow is energy-efficient and passively sustainable, it also works to keep office workers comfortable in the age of COVID-19, allowing for fresh air to enter the building throughout the day. While all the energy-efficient practices take place inside the building, CABI headquarters’s exterior promotes biodiversity through a living roof, attracting insects and birds to its sprawling green hills.

Scott Brownrigg firm director Ed Hayden describes a sort of symbiotic relationship between the building and its occupants that was achieved through, “A traffic light system [which] alerts users when the building gets too hot or doesn’t have enough fresh air. It will prompt occupants to open their windows and increase the levels of fresh air in the building.” CABI has come a long way since its conception in 1910, hosting close to 180 members inside its new, sustainable headquarters.

Designer: Scott Brownrigg

From the outside, CABI’s new headquarters appear as two rolling hills.

CABI HQ is filled out with floor-to-ceiling windows that dissolve the barrier between the outside and inside, bringing its occupants even closer to the environment.

Inside, office workers enjoy natural air ventilation through the building’s perforated facades.

Scott Brownrigg designed CABI’s new headquarters to merge seamlessly with its surrounding environment.

Situated in the middle of a manicured lawn, CABI’s location was specifically chosen to minimize solar gains.

A perforated facade allows fresh air to flow into the building throughout the day.

A traffic light system was put in place to indicate when the office could use some fresh air, signaling workers to open their windows.