UNITED KINGDOM
Researchers at the University of Bath are constructing 'BaleHaus', a two-storey house made of prefabricated straw bale and hemp cladding panels. The research team will be assessing straw and hemp's suitability as building materials so that they can use it more widely in the building industry, helping the UK to achieve its carbon emissions reduction targets. Straw can be grown locally and, because it absorbs carbon dioxide as it grows, buildings made from straw can have zero or even a negative carbon footprint. It also has insulating properties, keeping conventional heating, costs and the house's environmental impact at a minimum.
GERMANY
Citi's Data Centre in Frankfurt has been awarded LEED platinum, making it the first data centre in the world to achieve a platinum rating, and the first building in Germany to receive LEED accreditation. The building incorporates a number of environmental measures, achieving maximum sustainability. The Frankfurt Centre will use only 30 per cent of the power required for services that a conventional data centre would utilise, only 40 per cent of the heating energy and, through the use of innovative reverse osmosis treatment, will save 35,950,000 litres of water per annum.
UNITED STATES
Prairie Avenue Bookshop, the largest architecture bookstore in the US, will close at the end of August unless a buyer comes forward. The store first opened in the mid-1970s and is renowned for its extensive backlist and vast selection. Owner Marilyn Hasbrouck said that the recession and changes in the bookselling market have taken a toll, especially the rise of online retailers such as Amazon. Prairie Avenue Bookshop's interior makes its seem like a library rather than a commercial bookstore. "We wanted visitors to have an architectural experience," Hasbrouck said. Her husband, architect Wilbert Hasbrouck, designed the multi-tiered store which includes originals and reproductions of furniture by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Mies van der Rohe and Samuel Marx.
AFGHANISTAN
Paris-based group, Afghanculture, has chosen 86-year-old designer, Yona Freidman, to design a digital Museum of Afghan Civilisation. Freidman is widely known for his Ville spatiale and the 1956 CIAM Manifeste de l'architecture mobile. The museum will operate as a platform on which scholars, activists and designers can place digital pavilions highlighting different aspects of Afghan cultural traditions. These will include existing works of art, works that have been destroyed or disappeared, photos and etchings, and art forms such as music, dance and poetry.
ITALY
Santiago Calatrava has won the 2009 European Steel Design Award for his three bridges in Reggio Emilia, Italy. In 2002, Calatrava was commissioned to design a new train station for the railway line between Rome and Milan. He was also assigned the creation of a masterplan for the surrounding part of the city, in order to improve access and provide a gateway from the north. His plan called for integrating the station with three new bridges, designed to connect the Autostrada del Sole, an Italian motorway, to the city with a tree-lined avenue. "The most elemental function of a bridge is to connect things and it was always my intention to better connect Reggio Emilia to the rest of the world, both physically and symbolically," Calatrava said.
