Italy's solar powered Energy Belt, UK's struggling architecture graduates and San Francisco's greenest office building to exceed Platinum rating.
ITALY
A solar powered monorail in Bologna, called The Energy Belt, has been designed by Iosa Ghini Associati, connecting the airport to the city centre. At each station, a metal screen covered in vegetation protects passengers from the elements and helps to filter the air, providing natural insulation and shade. The system is designed to operate using solar energy captured by photovoltaic panels placed at each station and along the track's south-facing side.
UNITED KINGDOM
The number of architecture graduates unable to find work has almost tripled over the past year. Unemployment among university leavers has jumped by 44 per cent to 7.9 per cent. The figures represent the highest level of graduate unemployment since 1996. However, the average salary reported by graduate architects, town planners and surveyors was equivalent to $39,300, a 5.3 per cent increase from 2007 and almost $1,830 higher than the national average.
UNITED STATES
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission recently broke ground on a new headquarters that is expected to become the city's greenest office building. The 13-storey building has rooftop wind turbines and solar panels, and is designed to exceed a LEED Platinum rating when it opens in 2012. Other green features include a grey-water wastewater recycling system, window glazing, a solar chimney and on-demand water heaters.
LIBYA
Gordon Hood and Roger Klein of RMJM have won the Islamic Architecture Award for their work on the Zliten Al-Asmariyan University for Islamic Sciences in Libya. The campus is on an 82 ha site with core academic functions organised in four quadrants, within a perimeter 'habitable wall' that contains faculty offices and academic support functions.
CHINA
The USA's HMC Architects and China's Shunde Architectural Design Institute have produced the winning design for the First People's Hospital in Foshan. The design combines the medicine and culture of the East with the innovation of the West under one roof. Indoor and outdoor spaces, including healing gardens, create a holistic approach to medicine, conforming to both eastern and western medicine practises.
