This narrow townhouse in Lisbon has bushy plants all over its body and a swimming pool on its roof. Designed by Portuguese architects Luís Rebelo de Andrade, Tiago Rebelo de Andrade and Manuel Cachão Tojal, the three-storey house was designed as a vertical garden that includes 25 different Iberian and Mediterranean plant species. “Different fragrances are spread throughout the floors,” said the architects. “In the swimming pool you will have the flavour of saffron; in the bedroom, lavender; in the living-room, rosemary.”

On a total surface of 1,733.08 square meters, the creative team at Unsangdong Architects envisioned and implemented E+Green Home, a sustainable home which employs no less than 95 green technologies. Considered a prototype for the future, the incredible project was achieved by combining important principles of landscape architecture and ecological architecture: “The aim of E + Green Home is to suggest three e+ concepts; 1. Energy+, sustainable Energy Plus integrated with green technologies, 2. Eco+, environmental friendly housing, 3. Emotion +, housing which stimulates customer’s design emotion“. From various high performance insulation systems to solar panels, water reuse and smart ventilation ideas, this home ensures a modern and responsible lifestyle.

The collaboration between the Institue for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and leading multinational company in the Spanish electricity sector Endesa resulted in the construction of an innovative solar structure that will adorn the Barcelona’s Marina Pier for one year. Part of the Smart City Expo, the Endesa Pavilion (also known as Solar House 2.0 ) is describes as ”a testbed for informational grid technologies“. Combining prefabricated technologies with perfectly adapted customization, this genius design built in just one month is software-designed, cut to dimensions and assembled into a place-specific design. Plywood wedges shape outside solar system supports and interior storage spaces, while their cantilevering features shade the interiors from gaining too much heat in the summer.

French architect Patrice Bideau has sent us photos of his latest project of Bioclimatic House in Pluvigner. We recently wrote about another project of this eco-designer. In this case the client explicitly wanted a house that could meet rigorous French environmental standards and even specified certain materials for use. He described this brief as the “Gaia Charter” presumably after “Gaia” the book by James Lovelock that first saw the earth as an interconnected living system.

This video shows a lecture by Dr. Catherine Mohr who is the Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical, a high technology surgical robotics company that makes the da Vinci surgical robot. In addition, she is a Consulting Assistant Professor in the department of Surgery at Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. Mohr received her BS and MS in mechanical engineering from MIT, and has been involved with numerous startup companies in the areas of alternative energy transportation, computer aided design software, and medical devices. She is the author of numerous scientific publications, and the recipient of multiple design awards. Nevertheless, in this lecture Mohr disregards her profession and speaks about completely different topic. In a short, funny, data-packed talk she walks through all the geeky decisions she made when building a green new house – looking at real energy numbers, not hype. What choices matter most? Not the ones you think.

Sustainable buildings come in all shapes and sizes and act as examples for future businesses that need to stay in touch with the reality of global warming. The Eneco company shares its vision of sustainability in its new Rotterdam Headquarter. Amsterdam-based Hofman Dujardin Architects and Fokkema & Partners collaborated to design this 25,000 square meter structure and offer efficient work spaces based on a healthy work style. The Eneco Headquarter Rotterdam uses solar power, natural light and interior greenery giving fresh oxygen to construct a dynamic environment for all the people working here.

This video shows an interview with Danish architect Jan Gehl who is an urban designer consultant based in Copenhagen and whose career has focused on improving the quality of urban life by re-orienting city design towards the pedestrian and cyclist. He is a founding partner of Gehl Architects. Gehl received a Masters of Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Gehl advocates a sensible, straightforward approach to improving urban form: systematically documenting urban spaces, making gradual incremental improvements, then documenting them again. He has received many architectural awards among others Landscape Institute Award, NYC Award, Civic Trust Award. He is also a Honorary Member of American Institute of Architects. During the interview he advocates for reducing the energy consumption in buildings.

This unique building was designed by Vietnamese architects Vo Trong Nghia Architects. Built for a couple and one of their mothers, the building is 20m deep but just 4m wide, typical of the narrow but long ‘tube houses’ common in Vietnam. The front and back facades are entirely composed of layers of concrete planters cantilevered from two side walls. The distance between the planters and the height of the planters are adjusted according to the height of the plants, which varies from 25 cm to 40 cm.

Architect John Lin, who is an architecture professor at the University of Hong Kong, designed the house in Shijia Village, north-eastern China, as a model that would encourage village residents to be less dependent on outside goods and services. Lin’s winning project is an updated version of the vernacular mud brick courtyard house that populates China’s vast rural areas. His design for a modern prototype of this traditional locus of rural life, increasingly at risk, brings together both old and new, incorporating concrete technology with original mud brick construction.

Amsterdam’s UNStudio has just realized its latest project, the Center for Virtual Engineering (ZVE) for the ‘Fraunhofer-Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation IAO’ in Stuttgart, Germany. The official opening took place this week with an opening ceremony during which the German Sustainable Building Council (DNGB) awarded the building with a Gold certification.