Combining technologies

The Jahili Fort located in the modern-day centre of the city is the largest of Al Ain’s forts. Built in the 19th century by Sheikh Zayed the First, it can be seen from the Al Ain oasis to the west of the city. With its distinct three-tiered profile, the fort is now a national monument, pictured on the 50 Dirham note and often used as a logo or model for new architecture. The old fort was erected at the end of the 19th century.
The fort was recently restored by Roswag & Jankowski Architekten, Berlin.The interior surfaces remain true to the historical appearance. The ceiling consists of palm rafters and palm leaves. A local clay plaster has been used for the interior wall surfaces. In the exhibition areas a grey coloured fine clay finishing plaster made by Claytec was used to create a neutral background for the exhibition spaces. The floors likewise follow historical precedence and are made of rammed earth stabilised with a wax to cope with greater wear and tear.
All new insertions such as doors and furniture, made of corian or wood composite, are coloured white differentiating them from the surrounding building. The external render of the existing walls was examined and repaired where necessary. Previous renovation works had employed a non-traditional plaster with added gypsum for the crenelations. This plaster is too rigid and already exhibited defects; it was replaced with a clay plaster. The building was then given an overall finishing coat of clay plaster. The earth plaster is maintained at regular intervals as is traditional with this historical material. When used as an external render, clay plaster should be regarded as a weathering surface that needs ongoing maintenance, typically every two years, sometimes after sustained periods of heavy rain. Sandstorms are also a cause of erosion.The 90 cm thick external earth walls offer excellent thermal insulation. The additional insulation on the roof improves still further the indoor room temperature and together with the solar protection windows on the façade provide effective protection against the extreme heat outdoors. The building is kept at a constant 24°C using a water-based cooling system integrated into the plaster layer of the walls. This minimizes the need for additional air cooling so that only fresh air is required. The cool indoor temperature of the walls and the reduced need for cold air makes the indoor climate more comfortable and reduces the energy consumption. An actual room temperature of 24°C equates to a felt room temperature of 22°C. The plant and technical installations for the entire fort are located below ground in the buffer zone.
The construction is made of traditionally available building materials including earth, palm products and to a lesser degree also timber. The quartered palm trunks can span a room of about 2.70 m and dictate the strongly partitioned structure of the historic buildings. The walls consist of air-dried earth blocks which can be built directly on the sandy ground without the need for foundations. A matting made of palm fronds covered with earth is laid on rafters made of split and quartered palm trunks arranged at an incline. The small amount of timber available was used for the door and window frames

http://www.zrs-berlin.de/daten/inhalt/menue_02/02_p_architektur/p_architektur_01.html
http://www.eartharchitecture.org/index.php?/archives/1013-Jahili-Fort-in-Al-Ain-Abu-Dhabi.html
http://www.architekturclips.de/webseiten/filme/a_neun/aljahili/al_jahili_kurz.html

Annie Leonard#01 - The Story of Stuff International

Since The Story of Stuff was launched online on December 4, 2007, the site has been visited by millions of people in over 224 countries and territories around the world, and we have received literally thousands of requests for the film to be translated. We are pleased to launch this international site, which includes translated versions of the films with subtitles, as well as the contact information for the organizations around the world that did the translations.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/international/
http://www.storyofstuff.com/international/pdfs/script_english_annotated.pdf

Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple - Thailand

The Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple was built with more than a million glass bottles, in Thailand's Sisaket province, about 600 km (370 miles) northeast of Bangkok.

The Thai Buddhist temple has found an environmentally friendly way to utilize discarded bottles to reach nirvana -- using them to build everything in its premises, from a crematorium to shelters and toilets.

Bob Cain and his wife Dora used around 5000 glass bottles to build theit our small church. It's been over 20 years now since the whole adventure began and they have already built more tha 20 buildings made by glass bottles.

In 1963 Heineken put on the market beer bottle with square section that can be used as brick. They were called WOBO (WOrld BOttle). The design was improved by the Dutch John Habraken in Noordwijk but later abandoned. It is a good exemple of creative recicling and "from cradle to cradle" design, i.e. objects adopting functions in relation with different phases of their vital cycle. The only wall built with this special bricks is in the Heineken museum in Amsterdam...

http://www.habraken.com/

http://casadebotellasdepet.blogspot.com/

http://www.treherne.ca/pages/glassbottlehouse.html

Fliegende Bauten - flying building

In a manner as demonstrative as the one with which they store and categorize other people's garbage, Köbberling and Kaltwasser build structures that are more or less sustaintable. One of the first of these is called "Fliegende Bauten" (flying building), a German legal term that is normally used to designate stalls, caravans, or other easily-movable structures.Cabins and gaily-handmade makeshift shelters have found a temporary place in a vast parking lot on the outskirts of the city of Munich, among highrise apartment buildings, prisons, stadiums, and urban highways.

California Eco Homes Double by Khalili

Nader Khalili's affordable and eco-friendly ceramic, domed homes could one day house the first settlers on the Moon.

The Iranian-born, California-based architect's designs build upon elemental materials—earth, water, and fire—and their remarkably simple construction rely only on basic architectural forms, such as arches and domes. Once the structure is secured, the interior of the dome is kiln-fired, which seals the inside with a thick terracotta crust.

"To me it's obvious to use earth as a building block," Khalili tells AFP. "I don't consider that I have invented anything at all. "All the Mediterranean civilizations used earth or natural materials in their architecture."

Besides having his work recognized by the United Nations, Khalil is also regularly invited to give presentations to NASA about the possibilities of using his designs, which cost US$3,200 each to build, for lunar colonies. Because transporting thousands of tonnes of heavy materials from the Earth to the Moon isn't feasible, says Khalil, raising buildings from lunar soil presents an attractive alternative.

Some of Khalil's designs can even withstand earthquakes—primarily, he says, because all his houses rely on the arch. " The traditional shape of a square house with vertical walls is almost designed to fall over one day. With an arch nothing collapses," Khalil says.

In fact, local authorities in earthquake-prone California recently approved Khalil's larger, more-elaborate homes, known as "superadobes" after the first terracotta homes built by Spanish settlers to the state. The structures, which are naturally air-conditioned because of strategically placed openings in the walls, can be completed by three people within a week for around US$90,000.

On a humbler scale, mini-domes based on Khalili's designs were constructed to house people made homeless by the earthquakes in Iran in 2003 and Pakistan in 2005. "Imagine a world where every refugee has a roof over their head—that hardly costs anything," Khalili says.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/california_eco.php

Una casa per tutti

MVRDV, clotheshouse.

Beamdesign, pallet house.

Peruan Red Cross+IFRC, shelter.

Gio Ponti in late 1942 chose "Casa per tutti" ("a house for everybody") as title in a "Stile" issue first page. It was also the slogan and guide line for the VIII Triennale di Milano.
Today this is still a problem, a state of emergency increasing day by day not only in disaster sites, but in our cities with fragmented suburbs, slums, insufficient popular housing, first reception centres for migrants, Rom camps etc...
The exposition "Una casa per tutti" at Triennale di Milano (23th May - 7th September) shows a wide range of experimantal emergency housing, divided in four sections - Fast Houses, Utopias and New Materials, Micro/Macro, Emergencies -.

Between the analysed solutions can be found the existenz minimum of Le Corbusier, Gropius, Aalto, Prouvé, Fuller's geodetic structures, the Living Pod (1966) of Archigram, and so on until today, with Carolina Pino's cardboard shelters and Madhouser's Huts in recycled materials, MVRDV, Cliostraat, David Adjave, Shigeru Ban, Morphosis, the Chilean architect Aravena, Kengo Kuma, the Red Cross shelter and IFRC in Peru etc...

At the same time, "La vita nuda" ("the naked life", coordinated by Aldo Bonomi) presents the harsh reality of abusive settlements in Rome and maps 82 situation of risk in Milan municipality with a rich visual support of photos, clipping and installations.

http://www.triennale.it/index.php?lang=_eng&id=1&tbl=0&idq=726 http://milano.repubblica.it/dettaglio/In-Triennale-la-casa-per-tutti/1462936

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture: energy-efficient and sustainable architecture on an international scale

"We believe that architecture has a unique power to influence our world".
This is the beginning sentence of AS+GG's philosophy.
Two exemples of design " that aid society, advance modern technology, sustain the environment and inspire those around us to improve our world".


MASDAR HEADQUARTERS (MASDAR CITY, ABU DHABI, UAE) is the first building in the zero waste, zero carbon emission Masdar City outside of Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates. The Masdar Headquarters will be the first mixed-use positive energy building in the world. AS+GG worked with MEP engineers Environmental Systems Design and structural engineers Thornton Tomasetti on the design.

Clean Technology Tower Building (Chicago) on principles of biomimicry, Clean Technology Tower utilizes advanced technologies and climate-appropriate building systems to foster a symbiotic relationship with its local environment. The tower is sited and formed to harness the power of natural forces at its site- but it refines the conventional methods of capturing those natural forces to significantly increase efficiency. Wind turbines are located at the building’s corners to capture wind at its highest velocity as it accelerates around the tower. The turbines become increasingly dense as the tower ascends and wind speeds increase. At the apex, where wind speeds are at a maximum, a domed double roof cavity captures air, allowing for a large wind farm and the use of negative pressures to ventilate the interior spaces. The dome itself is shaded by photovoltaic cells that capture the southern sun. These systems provide both comfort and energy to the space.

http://www.smithgill.com/