Innovative “self-cooling” walls address rising temperatures
This year, Houstonians witnessed their city reach a searing 109 degrees in late August, tying a historic temperature record. Temperatures rose beyond 100 degrees for the duration of the previous month, underscoring the critical need for creative heat-resistance measures. The problem is keeping Read More...
Amsterdam's underwater bike garage will also improve aquatic habitats
The Netherlands is a country that is home to more bikes than people, which explains why city train stations have more than half a million bicycle parking spots, including the largest single garage in the entire world located in Utrecht. Even so, cyclists often struggle to find a spot to park Read More...
Onondaga Nation’s fire station brings sustainability and community together
As you probably have noticed by now, here at The Optimist Daily, we are major advocates of sustainable architecture as well as community-building, and we are elated whenever we come across an initiative that combines both. The most recent example that we’ve uncovered involves eco-friendly Read More...
How can we solve our plastic waste problem? Make an island out of it.
Visionary architect and psychologist Margot Krasojevic is working on an outlandish concept that may just help us deal with the concerning plastic waste problem plaguing the world’s oceans: building a plastic island. Krasojevic and her team at Margo Krasojevic Architecture started with Read More...
Eco-friendly architecture helps lift Chinese village out of poverty
Over the recent decades, the Miao community in the traditional Chinese village of Longtang in southwest China has experienced an economic decline due to its shrinking population. A recently completed architecture project aims to revitalize the area by blending sustainability with local Read More...
Ryerson University’s new health education tower raises sustainability standard
Toronto’s Ryerson University has reached a new standard for sustainable campus design with its award-winning Daphne Cockwell Health Sciences Complex. The building, designed in the hopes of achieving LEED Gold certification by global design practice Perkins and Will, is a 28-story tower comprised Read More...
This skyscraper in Taipei features a carbon-absorbing vertical forest
According to the World Green Building Council, our built environment is responsible for almost 40 percent of the world’s carbon footprint. Facing a dire need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, architects and urban planners must ensure that our future buildings have the smallest negative Read More...
Skyscraper design uses aquaponic terraced gardens to purify Shenzhen’s air
Sustainable architectural designs can go a long way in helping cities cope with some of the most pressing social and ecological challenges facing metropolitan areas today. The design of a pair of supertall skyscrapers in Shenzhen aims to showcase how integrating sustainability into our built Read More...
These colorful dome houses were built to help empower the local community
Reimagining the way we give rise to our built environment is key to reducing its heavy environmental footprint. A compelling architectural project in Iran shines light on how this can be achieved by engaging local communities as well as using simple materials that have been around for Read More...
This sustainable building is home to more than 1,000 trees
What if a building could host more plants than the entire nearby park? This is the vision of designer Koichi Takada Architects who plans to build a beautiful green Urban Forest in Brisbane, Australia. The proposed building would be covered in 1,000 trees and 20,000 plants, including 259 native Read More...