Green unlimited - by designing the United Nations Environmental Council

Green unlimited - by designing the United Nations Environmental Council

Lootens, J.A.

Korpershoek, M. (mentor)

Architecture

Materialisation

Strategic Architectural Design Development

2013-01-24

The United Nations Environmetal Council (UNEC) is a proposed 6th UN Council and shall have a global coordinating function in sustainable development. It will be a central organisation that collects, produces, propagates and exchanges information on sustainability worldwide, concerning ecological, social an economical issues. This UN Council should therefore have an icon function in sustainable building design worldwide. The building will be located next to the existing UN Headquarters (UNHQ) on the East Riverbank in Manhattan, New York City. The new headquarters for the Environmental Council of the United Nations has to be designed as an icon in sustainable building design worldwide, but how should it look like? Of course one of the main topics is sustainability, but how to express sustainability in the design of a building? Should it be expressed in the exterior of the building, clearly visible and shown in the façade? Can it be shown in the dimensioning and relations in between all building parts? Or is it something that is part of a more integrated system within the climate- and structural design of the building? Obviously it is not enough to claim that the design of this building will be sustainable ones the façade of the design looks green by applying a façade system with greenery. Maybe this will show a more sustainable image to the public on the street, but to me the integration of sustainability within a building design is far more then creating a ‘green’ image to the public. To me it will be a challenge to generate more awareness among the public about the topic of sustainability by integrating this main topic within the design of the new UNEC headquarters. In a same way the existing main building of the UN administration, designed by the Swiss-French architect and urban planner Le Corbusier and the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, also showed the more technical possibilities for the use of materials like reinforced concrete as icon for industrial improvements of the last century. We are in a unique moment in architectural and building engineering history when shifting world needs has asked us to question some of the fundamentals of how we have built for the last century and how we will build in the next. The image of ‘the primitive hut’ by Laugier shows not only the true beauty of architecture in form and composition, but also the use of natural materials in the build-up of a structure. For me this image embodies the subconscious wish of mankind to live (all human activities) in a structure that is formed and created by only the use of natural formed materials like timber. Therefore it is the role of the architect to fulfil this wish by the design of sustainable buildings, in which the use of structural timber for high-rise also shows the possibilities of this material as sustainable icon. High-rise timber buildings are not a new concept. 1400 years ago tall pagodas in Japan, like the Horyu-Ji Temple were built up to 19 storeys in wood and still stand today in high seismic, wet climate environments. Current innovations worldwide have triggered a race to create taller wood buildings, including a 12 storey building in Melbourne Australia, a 17 storey building in Norway and a 30 storey hybrid timber and concrete building in Austria; the LifeCycle Tower. The case for tall wood buildings introduces a new way of constructing tall buildings with a renewable, durable and strong building material that is manufactured by nature. To find truly sustainable solutions to buildings for the future, we must look at the fundamentals of the way we build and live. To achieve this, we have to go back to the origin of our inner self and build with natural materials in combination with modern technologies: highrise in timber, the new ‘hut’ as sustainable icon for the future.

sustainable highrise

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:afaed3ef-60e5-4d5a-9194-9a126696796b

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Lootens, J.A.