Let's take a look at some of the world's latest innovations in architecture and design.

City in a garden: Singapore’s new ‘green heart'

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Images: GP + B

Terraced gardens echo a rainforest valley in this central Singapore development.

"Marina One is a high-density, mixed-use building complex in the heart of Singapore’s new Marina Bay financial district which supports Singapore’s ambition to become a “City in a Garden”. Designed by Ingenhoven architects to appear as a plant-covered mountain rising into the Singapore skyline, the four-tower scheme includes lush planting, green sky terraces and tree-covered public spaces on the rooftops to integrate soft landscape into the fabric of the building.

"Gustafson Porter + Bowman’s design for the central ‘Green Heart’ unifies the sculptural and planted elements of the building’s architecture. While the outer face of the four towers strictly follows the city grid, the maximised inner space is a free-formed three-dimensional garden. A winding ramp creates both a visual and physical connection between the most important levels of retail, allowing visitors and residents to ascend from ground level. This creates a rich, engaging experience which takes one through the abundant vegetation, where water descends from above in vertical strands of water and light that falls into a large reflecting pool. Work was undertaken in collaboration with ICN Design International." - Gustafson Porter + Bowman

Peruvian architect wins 2018 Woman Architect of the Year

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Images: worldarchitecture.org and Barclay & Crousse

Peruvian architect Sandra Barclay, of Barclay & Crousse, has won Architect of the Year at the 2018 Women in Architecture Awards. Barclay won the award for her work on Peru’s Museo de Sitio de Paracas, which was designed to both blend into and withstand its harsh desert surroundings. The building preserves a memory of the former museum which was almost completely destroyed in an earthquake in 2007. 

"The museum is built entirely with salt-resistant reddish pozzolan cement. The exposed concrete and polished cement that constitute its materiality, blend with the neighboring red dunes.  The patina left by builders in the polished cement gives the museum a ceramic look that resembles the pre-Columbian ceramics that are exposed inside." - Barclay & Crousse

Norway's plans for a sustainable airport city

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Image: osloairportcity.no

Plans have been announced for the world’s first “energy-positive airport city”. Next to Oslo Airport, the 3.7sqkm site will produce all of its own energy and be served only by electric vehicles. Haptic Architects and the Nordic Office of Architecture are working on the plans, and have revealed that walkability, appropriate densities, active frontages and a car-free city centre are some of the main focuses for the new town. There are also plans to keep the city’s carbon emissions as low as possible through the use of smart technology such as driverless cars, auto-lighting for streets and buildings and smart-tech waste.