January 25, 2008

Architects Who Add Sex Appeal To Sustainable Designs

J.S. Marcus profiles five international designers who integrate green
principles into innovative projects
January 25, 2008

Norman Foster

From Berlin's Reichstag dome to London's Swiss Re building, no

contemporary architect has left a greater impact on the modern city skyline
than Norman Foster, whose high-tech modernism reinvented the skyscraper. What is less known is that he
is also a pioneer of sustainable design. The Reichstag dome is powered by vegetable oil, while the Swiss
Re building, nicknamed the "gherkin," uses a system of gardens to promote natural ventilation. Another
landmark project, the 47-story HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong, a modular glass-and-steel structure
finished in 1986, channels natural light throughout the building and has adaptable office spaces. Mr.
Foster's Beijing Airport terminal building, to open next month, will use natural light and ventilation, and
despite its size -- it will be the world's largest terminal at a million square meters -- is designed on what
the architect calls a human scale.

"If you look at the history of our company, we have, in very

tangible terms, demonstrated the potential for buildings to be
clean," Mr. Foster said of his London firm, Foster & Partners.

Mr. Foster brought sustainability issues out from "the

eco-corner," said Matthias Schuler, a Stuttgart, Germany, climate
engineer who teaches at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.
Until then, he said, "sustainability was connected to woolen socks
and wooden boxes."

Mr. Foster's most impressive current project is the Masdar

development in Abu Dhabi, a seven-square-kilometer "zero
A model of Norman Foster's car-free Masdar carbon" research city built in the desert.
development in Abu Dhabi; its shaded walkways
will lower temperatures.
The car-free city will be powered by solar energy and equipped
with an electric transportation system, and it will house Masdar University, for scientists studying
sustainability. The showpiece is a complex natural cooling plan that will bring the temperature down
dramatically, for example from about 45 degrees Celsius outdoors to about 25 degrees indoors, according
to Mr. Schuler, who is working on the project. The technology ranges from simple -- creating shade along
the streets -- to more elaborate -- using lithium salt compounds to dehumidify indoor spaces during
summer months.

People "will be cooled down by steps" as they move into buildings, rather than in the uniform cold rush
of air in traditional air conditioning, Mr. Schuler said.

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Mr. Foster calls Masdar a transition to "a much bigger picture" that goes beyond the architecture of
buildings and instead focuses on the relationship of buildings to a city.

The firm is working on an even larger sustainable development project in Libya's Green Mountain region.
The project is 5,000 square kilometers and will take in 240 kilometers of undeveloped coastline; it hopes
to provide sustainable housing and workplaces for hundreds of thousands of people and rely on renewable
energy such as solar farms.

www.fosterandpartners.com1

Jürgen Mayer H.

Jürgen Mayer H., one of Europe's most innovative younger architects, belongs to a generation of
Europeans for whom sustainable building has become second nature. "I think sustainability is really
important," he says, "but it's not architecture's only goal." There's also a need for designs to create a sense
of community, and to change cultural conditions.

Now 42 -- he put his middle initial H at the end of his name to

distinguish himself from all the other Jürgen Mayers, a common
name -- Mr. Mayer H. is known for his use of new building
materials and for the abstract forms his buildings take. "I like his
work because he is so unpredictable," says Andres Lepik, curator
of architecture and design at New York's Museum of Modern
Art.

Mr. Mayer H., who also designs interiors, furniture and art The exterior, of Jürgen Mayer H.'s student
installations, earned praise last year for his new student cafeteria cafeteria at Karlsruhe University.
at Karlsruhe University, built out of compressed, high-density
wood -- a favorite material in sustainable design because of its recyclability and the minimal energy
required to harvest it. In Mr. Mayer H.'s design it's transformed by a coating of polyurethane, giving it a
quality closer to plastic while at the same time adding a protective layer. "Wood has become a high-tech
material," he says.

In his largest project to date, Mr. Mayer H. is redeveloping a major square in Seville with a network of
enormous, mushroomlike structures. Meant to transform what had been an outdoor parking lot, the
project, called Metropol Parasol, is also built with compressed wood coated with polyurethane. The
structures will create a number of indoor and outdoor spaces, including a subterranean archaeological
museum, a ground-floor market hall and a rooftop restaurant and walkway. In 2005, the project was
awarded a prize for sustainable construction by the Holcim Foundation.

www.jmayerh.de2

Stefan Behnisch

The word "green" is shorthand in the sustainable-design world, invoking the entire range of
environmental concerns and technological innovations. But the word takes on a literal meaning when
describing the work of German architect Stefan Behnisch. "The color green is very important in our
work," says Mr. Behnisch, talking by telephone from his home in Stuttgart. "In fact our buildings often
have a lot of plants in them."

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With offices in Stuttgart and Venice, California, and with projects in the works
from Hamburg to Abu Dhabi, Mr. Behnisch has translated environmental
awareness into light-filled, plant-filled spaces that break down the barrier
between indoors and out.

Plants play a structural role in Mr. Behnisch's buildings. They are used to purify,
to add moisture and even to improve "the sound of the air," he says. "Plants
provide a sensual experience," he says. "They smell, move, whisper and create
shadows on the wall," and can transform "a sober and stiff working
environment."
Reflectors on the glass roof of
Stefan Behnisch's Genzyme
Center, in Cambridge,
His breakthrough work, the Institute for Forestry and Nature Research in
Wageningen, Netherlands, completed in 1998, has multipurpose indoor gardens.
Massachusetts, direct sunlight
into the central atrium and
The Genzyme Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, completed in 2003, is
other parts of the building.
known for its naturally lit atrium, whose twelve stories are filled with groups of
hanging gardens suggesting different habitats.

The Genzyme Center, which won the highest award from the U.S. Green Building Council, has become a
prototype for the development of sustainable architecture in a corporate setting. "We wanted a signature
building," says Henri Termeer, the Chairman and CEO of Genzyme, one of the world's largest
biotechnology firms. He says that during the competition for the project, he admired Mr. Behnisch's
ability to think about the building "from the worker's point of view."

Although the energy-saving devices, including a system of moving roof-top light reflectors, or "sun
trackers" used to flood the structure with natural light, were expensive, the savings in energy costs and the
drop in absenteeism, according to Mr. Termeer, have made the investment worthwhile.

Mr. Behnisch, born in 1957, is the son of the architect Günter Behnisch, best-known for designing
Munich's groundbreaking tent-like Olympic Stadium in 1972. Mr. Behnisch is contributing a residential
tower and the Unilever headquarters, which makes use of a large central atrium, to Hamburg's HafenCity
development. The buildings are subject to strict energy conservation requirements by the developers. Mr.
Behnisch says the setting on Hamburg's harbor poses special problems -- the area's strong winds can be
"both a danger and a means of producing energy."

www.behnisch.com3

Ian Ritchie

"Everybody wants the badge of sustainability," says Ian Ritchie, based in London. His tone is one of
amused outrage. Instead of small gestures and half-hearted measures, he says, "Europe should take the
desert areas in Greece, Spain and Portugal and put in a few hundred hectares of solar panels, and get
power all year round."

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Mr. Ritchie, 60, has nothing but disdain for "greenwashing" -- the
inefficient use of energy-saving technology more to soothe the
conscience than help the environment. "Little windmills produce
more carbon than they actually save," he says.

The architect is known for his glass towers. The Leipzig Glass
Hall, built in 1995 on the trade-fair grounds, uses underfloor
heating for winter and louvers near the ceiling to cool the
building in summer, and won an award for the best German
building of the year.
The rust-red steel exterior of Ian Ritchie's
He'll build eight glass towers in his current mixed-use project Courtyard Theatre, in background, at
Stratford-on-Avon.
near London's Tower Bridge, called Potters Fields. Mr. Ritchie
says the reduced glare in iron-free clear glass allows you to see "pure color in the reflections." He says
glass "keeps the water out and the heat in. All in all, a bloody good material."

"My buildings are designed to last a very long time," he says. "Buildings that will fall apart after 30 years
are totally unsustainable." The Spire of Dublin, for example, his elegant 120-meter-high ornamental steel
structure, "will last for 400 years," he says.

Even so, he recently has been acclaimed for a structure meant to be temporary, the Courtyard Theatre at
Stratford-on-Avon, to be used while the Royal Shakespeare Theatre is being renovated.

The architect used Corten, a rapidly rusting steel, for the exterior, creating a structure that is easily
recyclable, acoustically effective and aesthetically similar to local building materials. "What you end up
with," says theater executive director Vikki Heywood, "is this rich, blood-red, textured surface, which fits
in brilliantly with the red brick of Stratford."

Once the new RST is finished in 2010, the Courtyard will either come down or serve a different function.
Mr. Richie says that's fine -- a building's adaptability is another hallmark of its sustainability.

www.ianritchiearchitects.co.uk4

MVRDV

Funny isn't a word often associated with sustainable design, a movement characterized by broad idealism
and technological prowess. But it's hard not to chuckle about the Dutch Pavilion at Hannover's Expo
2000, designed by the Rotterdam firm MVRDV. The building took six different Dutch landscapes --
marsh, forest, dunes, etc. -- and stacked them, to create an elevated version of the flat country. Topped off
with windmills, which also supplied some of the structure's power, the building turned the tables on
sustainable design's main concern, a building's impact on the environment, by converting the Dutch
environment into a building.

Founded in 1993 by three recent architecture graduates from the Technical University in Delft, MVRDV
(the name is derived from the founders' initials) are considered leaders in sustainable design, but,
according to founder Jacob van Rijs, the firm doesn't emphasize its role in the movement. "It's dangerous
to get a label," he says. "We look at sustainability in a broader way," saying the firm is more concerned
with urban planning and with "making good neighborhoods" than with finding energy solutions for
individual buildings.

"Pig City," one of the firm's best-known conceptual projects, from 2001, addressed the task of making

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what could be called a good neighborhood for the Netherlands' pig population. The multistory pig farms
were designed to create the space needed for organic farming, and to reduce transportation costs and the
spread of disease.

The project wasn't meant to be built, but it has inspired real-life experiments in Holland, says founder
Winy Maas. (Nathalie de Vries is the third founder.) Mr. Maas says such experimental projects help
architecture get "beyond the Guggenheim effect," referring to Frank Gehry's 1997 museum in Bilbao,
which he says has caused too many discussions about "style, sexiness and form." Architecture "can do
something more," he says.

MVRDV has created five designs for the Make It Right project to rebuild a section of New Orleans
ruined by Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Van Rijs says the goal was to design a building that can survive another
flood, as well as drastically cut the utility bills of its occupants. MVRDV's designs display the firm's
trademark wit: one home is a V-shaped building, in which occupants could seek refuge in an elevated
area; another, based on a standard Dutch model used in low-lying areas of the country, actually floats.

MVRDV, staffed by about 50 architects, also is designing a 3,000-unit "eco-city" in Logroño, Spain,
which will produce all its own energy with wind and solar power and biomass fuel produced on site.

www.mvrdv.nl

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