Design Ideas for the Built World

View Original

Green Architecture: 5 Best Buildings of 2021

You can size up a building by dissecting its history, comparing its architectural styles, or measuring its height. However, we are in an era where climate change is getting all the emphasis it deserves. As a result, building green credentials is becoming more crucial and impacting designs, constructions, and operations. 

It has been proven scientifically that parks, woodlands, and urban gardens can reduce depression, but their role in environmental preservations is becoming very obvious. Hence, they have become immensely valuable. 

Green architecture is currently on the rise, and it has led some to environmentally sustainable and truly stunning buildings. With green architecture, the environmental impact of a building is minimized. It may be through deliberate awareness of the surroundings or using eco-friendly and energy-efficient materials to conserve the area’s biodiversity. 

With the ongoing rise of green architecture, here are some of the top 5 buildings of 2021.

image © dezeen & penda

1. Toronto Tree Tower

Architect Chris Precht designed this. It is a proposed residential building made from timber and incorporates staggered walls with trees and plants sprouting from the spacious balconies. This building is self-sufficient and interacts well with the environment. 

Architect Chris Precht, he’s looking to stimulate people’s senses through his work. He believes that future cities will be driven by surveillance and data collection, and there will be more knowledge. However, it is crucial to also balance it with our senses, emotions, and consciousness. And the best way to achieve this is to connect to nature and integrate plants. His dream for the future is to have buildings that we can touch, smell, and hear, and feel alive with. 

image © Ronen Bekerman

2. Off The Grid Office

The idea behind creating the “Off The Grid” office came from Romania-based Stefan Mantu, and the building was designed to illustrate the need to bond with nature. He refers to this design as an Exterior Interior, a terminology he coined to describe his work. 

According to him, the importance of green architecture must not be lost on all of us. It must be seen as crucial towards building sustainable development for society. The ‘Off The Grid Office’ concept communicates the need for functional spaces to respect and sustain the balance between the place they are built on and the people. When designing a human habitat, the most crucial comfort elements are light, air, and sound. The concept of ‘Off the Grid Office’ is based on the idea that the human environment should integrate with the existing natural environment it is built on. 

image © X-Architecture & visualatelier8.com

3. Shilda Winery

A British cross-disciplinary firm, X-architecture, with offices in Tbilisi and London, has built a spectacular and extraordinary winery, which they called Shilda, in Kakheti, Georgia. According to the company’s website, the form of this building is considered to be in response to some of the environmental factors they are faced within the area and the quality of wine they have been able to produce. This building was designed so that it is hard to notice when you are viewing it from the aerial view or bird’s eye view. This is because it was created to be embedded and blend into the landscape of the vineyard. 

image © Agoda

4. Park Royal Hotel

The Park Royal Hotel is one of the biggest and most eco-friendly buildings in the world. This hotel was built by a Singapore-based architecture firm founded in 1994 by Richard Hassell and Wong Mun Summ. 

The Royal Park Hotel is one of the most renowned hotels in Singapore and has incredibly sustainable features such as green walls, reflecting pools, high-rise gardens, and waterfalls. 

image © modlar

5. Corallo House Project

The Corallo House Project was created in Santa Rosalia, Guatemala, by PAZ Arquitectura. This green building spans 8,040 square feet (747 square meters) and is surrounded by a natural forest habitat. The building is built on a heat-repelling concrete foundation made of recycled materials and surrounded by trees. The architect wanted the trees existing in the surroundings to interact with the house and the living space. 

Conclusion 

The importance of green architecture and eco-friendly buildings is becoming evident by the day. Several vertical farms and urban gardens are popping up in different parts of the world. According to a prediction by the UN, almost 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities and towns by 2050. 

The trend has started to shape up. We already have urban forests being built in Paris to help reduce air pollution. Singapore is also confronting its food crisis by creating lab-grown shrimps and building sky farms. However, the trend is not stopping, and it is a matter of time before sustainability and green architecture are the order of the day. 

In showcasing the rise of green architecture, here are five of the best buildings of 2021. 


Author Bio: Charlie Svensson is a fast, engaging freelance writer who worked for A writer and provided the best essay writing. In addition, he is skilled in content writing and blogging. The favorite topics of his posts are education, social media, marketing, SEO, motivation blogging, and self-growth. Excellent adaptability of skills to reach diverse audiences.

cover image © © X-Architecture & visualatelier8.com