Lungjuice Preservation

Clearly you can appreciate the carbon neutrality of this LED screen that is built as a part of Bejing's insane modernity leap. Designed by architects Simone Giostra & Partners, it stores solar energy by day and uses by night. However, note the crisp blue sky in the background- an obvious Photoshop endeavor as we all know that BJ has skies a beautiful shade of gray during daylight hours.

Sustainable Design Sightings

Today I stumbled upon what claims to be "China's first neutral carbon hotel" on the way back from lunch.

Ironically both foreign owners approved of naming the establishment urbn hotel, subjecting the joint to a Chinese fallacy which even the government itself is calling an end to: engrish.

Set in an old factory warehouse, the inconspicuous cloister slumbers in a serene courtyard setting with large deciduous trees lining the south fence. The reception area wall is completely decked with vintage luggage bags precariously stacked one upon the other. We wrangled a tour using our canto skills, and the manager brought us up to two rooms in the four story construction. The interior of the rooms themselves has a modernistic space-efficient design with a very Zaha Hadid circa 5 years ago feel to it: continuous angles stretching throughout the 11 foot ceiling rooms. Their brochure claims to use local and recycled materials- totally believable considering how much rebuilding Shanghai is experiencing right now. They also boast sustainable design solutions in the building process, like passive solar louvers and rain water retention basins. Not quite the points solar technology would redeem, but its a start. On the flipside, a closer look at the craftsmanship exposes the little-things-that-count detail that slipped by the architect. A wonderful sunken lounge area pimped out the room we inspected, but stepping down to the area was an effort: the staircase to the area was substantially too high; slopping up and down took major effort. The untreated wood around the bathroom sink area is a nice antique touch, but in a year's time the material will be rotted out due to Shanghai's humid weather. Recommendation: treat the wood with some eco-happy goo. As for the step, cut two 5-inch steps with a tread deep enough to accomodate bigass feet and folks in a state of drunken stupor.

To sum up, hats off to this duo for stepping up the game in what otherwise seems to be an anti-green rat race (after all, its still about the bottom line). Hopefully the QC on the service will be as revolutionary as their green design building.

Serpentine Gallery Pavillion 2007

serpentine gallery
Originally uploaded by sherryworld

Every year for the past eight years, the Serpentine Gallery commissions various badass architects from around the world to build a series of temporary pavilions in the quiet Kensington Gardens of southwest London.

After a carnal night out in town, David and I found ourselves a month too early for the completion of this year's program, a collaboration between Scandinavian architect Kjetil Thorsen and Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.

In the past, the Serpentine Gallery has commissioned internationally acclaimed architects who, at the time of the Serpentine invitation, have not completed a building in the UK. Figures such as Rem Koolhaas, Cecil Balmond, Alvaro Siza, Eduard Souto de Moura, Oscar Niemeyer, Toyo Ito, Daniel Libeskind, and Zaha Hadid have all graced the soils of this garden. To top it off, the bulk of these projects have been topped off by the finesse of engineering firm Arup.

Arup is not your typical engineering firm. With a mission statement of "working noncompetitively with colleagues", Arup pursues the philosophy of "total architecture," in which structural, aesthetic, human, and environmental considerations are treated as parts of a whole. In a lecture to his firm before his death, founder Ove Arup said, "By creating a model fraternity, so to speak, we make a contribution to what is almost the central problem of our time: how to overcome the social friction and strife which threatens to overwhelm mankind. We could become a small-scale experiment in how to live and work happily together." (Woah, constructivism. Woah, Ayn Rand.)

With this fraternal approach to sharing ideas and social harmony, it's quite fitting that this year will be the first year in which the Serpentine Pavilion will host a series of lectures, in which it will act as a ‘laboratory’ every Friday night with artists, architects, academics and scientists leading a series of public experiments.

Open this month and to close end of November, the project will culminate in an extraordinary, two-part, 48-hour marathon laboratory event exploring the architecture of the senses.