Architecture Now and the Future

Going Green

By the 1990s, sustainable design had taken hold, with the effort to conserve earth’s resources for future generations. Today’s buildings are greener and smarter, some are even net zero, which means that a building produces enough renewable energy to meet its own annual energy consumption requirements.

Virginia’s
Brock Environmental Center

This facility produces 80 percent more energy than it uses, and sells the excess to the local grid.

Canada’s First Net-Zero Energy
Institutional Building

The new Joyce Centre for Partnership and Innovation at Mohawk College’s Fennel Campus is a striking, solar-powered “living sustainability lab.”

Photo Credit: Mohawk College, The Joyce Centre for
Partnership & Innovation. Photographer Ema Peters.

Lightbox 23 Net Zero in Portland

Lightbox 23, the new net-zero project from Lightbox Portland and Steelhead Architecture, is part of the growing movement to ultra sustainable, beautifully designed homes.

Photo Credit: Steelhead Architecture and Josh Partee Photography.

Going Sculptural

Digital design has made it easier for architects to work out complicated environmental issues and structural problems, and produce more jaw-dropping sculptural forms.

Vessel, a giant sculpture in
New York City

This tower, made of 154 staircases, gives users new perspectives on Manhattan’s West Side.

The Amazing Shed at
Hudson Yards

Located in the Hudson Yards on the West Side of Manhattan, The Shed is a nonprofit cultural organization featuring original works of art in all disciplines for all types of audiences. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Lead Architect, and Rockwell Group, Collaborating Architect, The Shed’s 200,000-square-foot Bloomberg Building is as amazing as the works of art it showcases. It can physically transform to support artists’ most ambitious ideas. The eight-level base building houses two levels of gallery space and a theater as well as the Tisch Skylights, which contain rehearsal space, a creative lab for local artists, and a skylit event space.

When large-scale performances or events are the order of the day, enter The McCourt, which is formed when The Shed’s telescoping outer shell is deployed from over the base building and glides along rails onto the adjoining plaza. It’s a perfect space to accommodate an audience of approximately 1,250 seated and more than 2,000 standing, with flexible overlap space in the two adjoining galleries of the base building to accommodate an audience of 3,000.

Watch a video of this amazing building.

Academy Movie Museum
in Los Angeles

LA’s spherical movie museum from Renzo Piano and Gensler designed to be the world's premier institution dedicated to the art and science of movies and moviemaking.

Japanese firm, SANAA’s Rolex Learning Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland

The Center is a large 20,000 square meter one-room space, containing a network of areas for study, social activity, dining, and relaxing, with almost invisible supports for its complex curving roof, which required new methods of construction.

Auditorio de Tenerife, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, The Canary Islands

By Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava the dramatic sweep of the roof rises off the all concrete building like a wave, creating a distinctive landmark and connecting the city to the ocean.