There are 208 guest rooms and the hotel will also feature retail, spa and sauna suites. Every guest room has a slightly different view and the spiral design of the building keeps foot traffic flowing nicely. Whilst, the glass-bottomed pool may not appeal to all, (those bathing-suit adjustments could be tricky) the unique building design will no doubt impress many guests. The architects worked with Atelier Ten’s environmental design consultants to ensure that the use of natural resources such as sun, wind and water was incorporated into the hotel’s design. The interior temperature can be maintained by a retractable glass door which will allow cooling sea breezes to enter the building whilst a waterfall which uses ocean water will also help to keep the interior cool and reduce humidity levels.

The team at Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology (SMIT) designed the GROW panels with the environment in mind. The panels are based around a modular brick system with each brick containing five solar leaves with a flexible piezo generator at the stem. A number of bricks are rolled together with PV and conductive ink. The rolls are layered and then stamped to create leaves and connection point. The leaves are available in a variety of colors and opacities and are 100% recyclable. The various opacities of the leaves can be optimized for their heat gain, light transmission and view.

Jude Garvey

Via MetropolisMag and Inhabit.

Located in Athens, Greece, the Ramp House is actually a roof addition to an existing three-storey building that includes a balcony, also with a ramp on it (good idea or bad idea?). The main ramp is in the living room, with a partition to the kitchen. It is a mixture of wood and concrete, with storage units and a fireplace built into the ramp forms.

Jamilah Le

Via Architectural Review via Gizmodo.

At a time when the world’s population continues to grow, arable land is under threat from deforestation, poor management and global warming. All these factors point to vertical farming being an idea whose time may finally have arrived - and what better place to put it to the test than Dubai. That’s the thinking of Italian architectural firm Studiomobile, who have been working on housing and infrastructure projects in the United Arab Emirates where a lack of fresh water and a high soil value make such a concept feasible.

The vertical farm features a soaring spire with pod-like ‘sky-gardens’ branching off to give it an organic feel in keeping with designers aims to create a clean, green, sustainable source of food for a more self-sufficient Dubai. The concept makes use of the Seawater Greenhouse process, which uses seawater to cool and humidify the air that ventilates the greenhouse and sunlight to distill fresh water from seawater to enable the year round cultivation of high value crops that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to grow in hot, arid regions such as Dubai. This is in stark contrast to costly and energy intensive desalination plants that rely on boiling and pumping to produce fresh water.

The concept works by continually cycling through three phases. In the first phase the air going into the greenhouse is first cooled and humidified by seawater, which is trickled over the first evaporator to provide a fresh and humid climate for the crops. Then in the second phase as the air leaves the growing area it passes through the second evaporator, which has seawater flowing over it. The humid air mixes with the warm dry air of the ceiling interspace making the air much hotter and more humid. The third and final phase sees the warm air forced upward by the temperature induced stack effect. In the central chimney the warm and humid air condenses when it comes in contact with plastic tubes that contain cool seawater. The drops of fresh water that appear on the surface of the condenser fall into a collection tank to be used to water the crops and for other uses.

At present the design is only a concept, but given Dubai’s love of distinct architecture coupled with their almost complete reliance on trade for food and deficiency of arable land and fresh water, don’t be surprised to see Studiomobile’s seawater vertical farm design appearing on Dubai’s skyline in the future. And if it proves successful there the lessons learned there could see the concept adapted to help feed ever growing cities around the globe and tackle the food shortages that look set to plague the world as global warming’s effects take hold.

Darren Quick

Source: designboom Via Inhabitat.