Solutions in Sustainable Construction

Poetic interpretation of a water purification infrastructure as public space along the edge of the Ganga River in Varanasi, India.

This project is located in the city center and turns an unused arm of the River Spree into a natural 745m “swimming pool”. The pool is the equivalent of 17 Olympic swimming pools and features a 780m-long reed bed filtration system. The Flussbad will have a strong impact on the quality of urban life.

Following over 25 years of civil war, the reintegration of young soldiers is one of the great challenges Sri Lanka faces. This Community Library provided young men from underprivileged backgrounds with construction training during the implementation of the building. The slender building with a footprint of 1,400 sq m sits lightly in the landscape and wraps around an inner courtyard, taking full advantage of cross ventilation and daylighting. Rammed-earth walls and recycled materials reduce costs and the ecological footprint.

Ágora Bogotá will be unique. The city’s new convention center is stacked vertically to minimize the building’s footprint and to correspondingly maximize the surface area of outdoor public spaces in the heart of the city. The building features high levels of flexibility without compromising its architectural quality that is illuminated and ventilated naturally through an actively responding and acoustically sealed enclosure.

In underdeveloped settlements, a lack of sanitation is one of the major problems. By applying an additive strategy, this project in a resettlement area of Savda Gherva significantly improves hygiene and strengthens social cohesion within the local community by involving the residents throughout the process. A pilot project commenced in 2012 to provide off-grid sanitation to more than 1,500 people.

Project intermingling flood basins and public amenities, with spaces following the gravitational logic of flowing water in an underprivileged area of Mexico City.

Religious and secular complex: A reinterpretation of traditional local construction for a new mosque and community center, creating a space in the village open to all.

The secondary school project uses traditional building materials and technologies and places great emphasis on actively involving the local population in the construction process. Locally-sourced clay is mixed with aggregates and cement to cast walls on-site based on a two-piece formwork. The school is exemplary in terms of its successful approach to the adaptive use of building materials, community development, climatic mitigation and aesthetics.

The renovation and extension project currently under construction provides a new home for the John H Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design on the site of a culturally significant nineteenth century structure. The project rehabilitates existing urban, landscape, and architectural elements – and demonstrates the University of Toronto’s aim to foreground sustainability as part of its pedagogic program.

Cooling as a process is one of the biggest energy consumers in the building sector globally. Air-shade addresses this problem by proposing a shading system that is sensitive to solar exposure and powered by air – with no need of any external energy source. It can vary in scale, size, material, and form: the proposed device is therefore applicable to a broad variety of buildings, constructions, façades, roofs, windows, etc.