Skyscrapers are normally associated with society’s forced decline of the environment’s quality and sustainability. They represent man’s destructive ways against nature for the sake of progress. Not all skyscrapers are made this way and one concept design won the 2013 eVolo Skyscraper Competition. The Polar Umbrella isn’t just a skyscraper design that tickles the imagination with future technological wonders. It stems from a concept that buildings can go beyond being eco-friendly. Built properly, they can actually start reversing some of the damage that has been done to the environment….

Prefab housing isn’t what it used to be. While we typically think of cheap, low-quality mobile homes when think of prefabricated construction, the world’s top architects and engineers are looking to prefab housing as way to create sustainable urban environments. Since prefab housing is affordable, energy efficient, and incredibly quick-to-build, creative designers are hoping to bring this concept to skyscrapers. Next week in Seattle, Sustainable Living Innovations, a group made up of architectural design, construction, and engineering consultants, will unveil what they believe…

For years we have heard about self-sustaining homes that can take advantage of the latest technology to harness solar energy and provide the most economical usage of available resources, but we haven’t been seeing them. However, a few families in the UK are getting some eco love with the Home for Life project. Perhaps this marks the beginning of affordable eco-friendly housing? In order to create a self-sustainable, carbon-neutral home, the Danish concept of an “Active House” So what does a house of the future have? Just about everything you could imagine to maximize eco-friendliness: Air-tight…

Steve really hates his house – in fact, he’s been meaning to tear it down for years. Does this make him a crazy person? Don’t answer that. Steve has, however, just received word that all systems are go: the red tape preventing Jobs from bulldozing his Woodside, California home has been cleared, and at his leisure, plans for his dream ‘iHome’ (more like iPad, am I right? Right?) can commence. Reminiscin’ of the wildstyle, ’04: upon Jobs getting permission to end his home, Woodside preservationalists created a group, ‘Uphold Our Heritage’, committed to saving the residence from certain iDoom. What…

Going green can be beautiful. By the time of the upcoming 2016 Olympics, being held in Rio de Janeiro, a man-made waterfall will be used to power the future Olympic village. The Swiss architectural office RAFAA is undergoing this unique project named the Solar City Tower. The artificial waterfall will flow down the side of a 105-meter high skyscraper doubling as a hydroelectric power plant for the games. It will house a small power plant that runs on solar energy in order to pump water to the 105-meter height. There will also be a observation deck located on the structure providing a variety of cafes…

There are some things in architecture that really just have to make you think wow. Most of these things are over-the-top one-time designs that are extremely unique and are unlikely to be seen elsewhere. But this architectural beauty is one that could be applied elsewhere in the future. It’s a multi-level car park, but one that we have never seen the likes of before. The 1111 Lincoln Rd. building is a 300-car parking with many levels that offer 11 shops, 3 restaurants, a shop on the 5th floor and a restaurant on the roof. Wait a minute… I thought this thing was a car park? Well, it is! It just…

On the banks of the river Mersey in England, a new sculpture by architect Tonkin Liu has been unveiled. The 45 foot high sculpture features 160 huge metal petals and over 60 LED lights that are powered by wind turbines. The lights shine at a brightness that intensifies with the wind speed, with power supplied by three completely off-grid wind turbines. The sculpture was commissioned as part of a larger project to revitalize polluted industrial land near the river. Tonkin Liu won the international bidding competition in 2007. Source: BD Online, Inhabitat…

Some see abstract art as a mess while others see it as a beautiful piece of work, but regardless of the side you favor, this project by a motivated group in the UK is sure to impress any tech-savvy person. Extracts of Local Distance is the work of Benjamin Maus, Frederic Gmeiner and Thorsten Posselt, all of which whom have created something special: a computer software that analyzes vanishing points of photographical architecture, organizes all these points and segments of images, and creates new images based from the contents of hundreds or thousands of other images. The result is an image that…

While to some the above picture represents a World Architecture Award-winning design concept for a new home for the Philarmonie de Paris, come on: it’s an Imperial Destroyer, right? Right!? Okay maybe that’s just me. The proposed building by Jungmin Nam – which, sorta’ incredibly, he completed while still at the Harvard School of Design – aims to showcase the different views of Paris, and visitors will not only catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower but numerous other aspects of the City of Lights. as the architect states, the idea with this design is to “bring people to a visual contact with the surrounding…

When you think of doing good or being environmentally sustainable, building a massive skyscraper probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But surprisingly, that’s exactly the aim behind an idea put forward by Polish architecture firm h3ar for the Sudan. The proposed tower, which looks like its pulled straight from a sci-fi movie, apparently employs a series of pumps to draw water from a recently discovered massive underground lake in Darfur. Since much of the conflict in the area has actually been a result of battles of limited water resources, this can only be a good thing….