Prefab is taking center stage this summer at The Museum of Modern Art in NYC with the Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling exhibit opening in July. As part of the exhibit, five renowned architects will bring a mix of existing and prototype prefabricated designs to full form on a exterior lot adjacent to the museum!

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One Bryant Park is the first LEED platinum “skyscraper”; what is your favorite LEED aspect of the project? Aside from LEED, what was the most interesting or exciting part of the project for you?

For me, the best part of this project isn’t a single element or technology but rather the chance to work with an incredible team of dedicated professionals all driven by the same goal. Having the backing of the Bank of America and the Durst Organization has made a tremendous difference in setting the bar high in terms of sustainable design. On top of that, each consultant on the team is top notch and fully engaged with the project.

What was your least favorite or the most difficult thing about the project?

Certainly the most difficult part of this project has been the intense and detailed coordination required for such a large and complex building. The vast majority of that has far less to do with the green elements than with the requirements of a major banking institution being built in the middle of midtown Manhattan post 9/11.

Architecture has delayed gratification in terms of realization when compared with other design fields. OBP has been under construction for three years and has one year to go. To what extent are you involved in the process? What is it like to work on a project that takes six years from first sketch to completed structure?

I’m still involved daily in almost all aspects of the project, from the spire detailing to quality control on the installation of the curtain wall. Even after several years, there’s always something exciting and new right around the corner - not to mention that One Bryant Park is not your ordinary office building. Even still, staying personally motivated and keeping a team of people working over many years requires a strong sense of ownership and responsibility, as well as a fair amount of patience. Fortunately, projects this large are always broken down into smaller pieces, each with its own bit of gratification.

Can you explain how the big ice cubes in the basement will work?

They’re not exactly giant ice cubes, but the thermal storage system basically works like a “battery” for cooling. In the basement, there are 44 10-foot high, cylindrical tanks with water and a cooling coil inside. At night, when electrical production from the co-generation plant exceeds the building’s needs, we use that excess to run the chilling equipment to freeze the water in the tanks. During the day, the ice melts and provides cooling to the building. This shifts some of the electrical load from daytime to nighttime, which reduces the impact on an already stressed NYC electric grid.

How about those waterless urinals?

Waterless urinals are pretty straightforward; from the point of view of the user, there is no real difference. We have them in our own office, which we moved into last year and is also LEED Platinum - the first in New York. Instead of flushing, the urinals have a special drain fitted with a cartridge full of a liquid less dense than urine, which “floats” on top and seals out odors. Like all urinals, they have to be regularly maintained and cleaned and the cartridge has to be changed on occasion.

People are still wondering if “green” is just a trend. Where it often costs more to produce green products, in terms of buildings, the energy savings seem to actually make building green more cost-effective in the long run. Were there any environmental aspects of the design that needed to be compromised due to cost?

Building green is not a trend, at least not in our minds. The idea of building green really is about building smarter, higher performing buildings which are considerate of the people who live or work in them. Like any other aspect of the building, the benefits need to be weighed against the costs. There were several items which just couldn’t be justified today. When we started the project, we were sure that there would be building-integrated photovoltaics, but the more we looked at the amount of electricity generated, the less it made sense. We also looked seriously at including a wind turbine - in fact, the building originally had two spires, one architectural and one for the wind turbine. We even set up an anemometer on top of the adjacent 4 Times Square and took a full year of wind measurements. What we discovered is that while there is sufficient “quantity” of wind, it isn’t consistent enough to make the power generated worthwhile, at least not at the current state of the technology.

Maybe this is a question for Jordan Barowitz over at the Durst Organization, the developers of the project, but do you know to what extent being LEED platinum has been a selling point for the building, which I believe is almost completely leased?

The building is almost fully leased, and from what we have heard being green has made a significant difference. We are designing one of the tenant floors at the moment for fashion designer Elie Tahari LTD, and the green elements of this building were very important to them.

http://www.gotwind.org/

http://www.ledwaves.com/product.php?productid=19530&cat=392&page=1

From baby decor to Adrift’s sophisticated mobiles, mobiles brighten up a room for inhabitants of all ages. The Birds of a Feather Mobile. is a new favorite we just discovered at Friend in San Franciso. Designed by Helene Ige, this flora-and-fauna mobile features tree branches and cute little birds laser cut out of Walnut Veneer. We think its a lovely way to bring a little of the outdoors into your home.

$59.50 from Friend

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The challenge set forth by the AIA was to create ‘A House for an Ecologist’, a home base from which a US Fish and Wildlife Service Ecologist in Residence could live and conduct field research. Raphaelle and Alfredo Maul, of Maul Dwellings in San Sebastian, Spain, answered the call with The Landscape House - a site-sensitive, passive solar dwelling designed to fuse environmental performance with aesthetic integrity, building science with architectural excellence.

Meant to be oriented along an east-west axis on the highest elevation of the rural West Virginia site, The Landscape House takes advantage of prevailing winds with a double roof system that improves air circulation around the structure and generous, adjustable openings on the north and south façades. Passive solar heating and natural daylighting are controlled by a system of operable louvered shutters which incline on the north and revolve on the south. On the roof, a highly efficient Sphelar (3D cell) photovoltaic system collects sunlight for on-site energy.

The Landscape House is an exercise in water conservation. Water usage is clustered within the dwelling to minimize material consumption. The kitchen and bathroom are equipped with low-flow fixtures, dry-compost toilet, recycling area and compost unit. Rainwater is harvested and stored under the solar roof providing grey water to fixtures, thermal mass and a source of heat in winter through circulation in a radiant floor system. A solar dehumidifier draws moisture from inside and outside the building to produce potable water for drinking.

Although meant to pass through many seasons, The Landscape House’s locally-sourced, recycled and renewable materials are easily disassembled for reuse at a different site. The AIA competition jury from the Architecture of Sustainability conference took note saying, “We like the pre-fab-ness of it—from prefabricated elements. We also had a lot of discussion about ‘touching lightly’—what a small footprint means. It could be totally non-physical, the footprint.”

The Landscape House won the 2006 AIA Committee on Design Ideas Competition. Although it exists only in concept we’d certainly like to see it built.

+ Maul Dwellings
+ AIA ‘House for an Ecologist’

The past few weeks have seen shock waves resonating throughout the world of sustainable architecture as two monumental reports on green building confirmed its clout and cache. First, the CEC released “Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges”, which lauded sustainable buildings as the quickest, cheapest, and most substantive way to cut down on North American greenhouse gas emissions. Next, CoStar released a comparison report stating that LEED buildings consistently outperform their peers in terms of occupancy rates, sale prices, and rental rates, with demand far outnumbering their supply. These two developments signify a significant shift towards a market-driven era of economically and environmentally viable buildings.

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Obviously not as good than living oil-free in the first place, the OSP robot is still an ingenious solution to something that has detrimental effects on wildlife and the environment, containing oil spills in record time through its high-tech, modular design.
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We’ve featured Lisa Albin’s Iglooplay furniture collection before here at Inhabitat; in fact, we first featured it on last year’s BKLYN Designs when she showcased the Mod Rocker. So, we’re delighted to see her again this time featuring a companion to the previously mentioned piece, the Mod Topper, at this year’s show.

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Designer Alain Bertreau creates simple furniture that cuts out excess materials and effort, leaves an overall serene and minimalistic impression, and packs light. We’ve taken a look at his Instant Chair and his Modular Fence Chair. Previously, we just glanced at his latest project, the Cover stool challenges, but the way our notion of package design by turning a cardboard box into the base of a waste-free pouf.

The Cover stool comes in (as?) a sturdy box with a foam pad inside. Just zip the pad around the box and you’ve killed two birds with one stone-assembly & clean-up. When its reached the end of its life, you can even send the box off to recycling.

In a MocoLoco interview last May, Berteau said this to creating more stuff in an overflowing world: “It’s very easy to design with style but it’s really difficult to invent relevant solutions. Things can always be improved…at least I’m trying.”

+ Index Award
+ Alain Bertreau

Via MocoLoco