Studio Lynn-Robotic Architecture

I came across these two videos, take a look, it pretty cool.







Some very interesting concepts, however it seemed that the students for some reason paid hardly any attention to any of the interior, how it would be used by the USER , who the buildings are designed for....aren't they??

Can modern architecture be truly sustainable?

Yes, says Hopkins’ MD Bill Taylor, we have no choice but to build sustainably; no, says the Victorian Society director Ian Dungavell, modern architects prefer gadgetry to thermal mass

'Yes'

If we’re going to build, then we have to do it sustainably. We don’t have any alternative. However, at the same time I think it is fair to ask whether modern architecture is truly sustainable at the moment, to which the answer has to be no. The point, though, is to stress that it can be.

As architects, we can no longer afford to approach this challenge with failure in mind. We no longer have any excuses. We’ve got all the benefits of analytical tools and research, which means far less guesswork, and there is also an increasing body of work that we can learn from.

The innovations of a decade ago have become commonplace, and now we have them at our finger tips. Something else that is interesting is how this new knowledge has reconnected architects to our traditional knowledge and skills, for example, the way we use and reuse materials like brick, lime mortars and timber.

Sustainability is about far more than just a structure’s energy demands. Britain’s historic buildings are central to our culture and the best of them have served us well in many ways, but they are, by and large, simply not efficient enough.

So when we build anew, we need to produce a contemporary architecture that is just as beautiful as the Georgian house but consumes no energy to heat and cool.

We should think of sustainability not as a “go faster” stripe but rather as a fundamental ingredient of how we should be designing long-life buildings.

'No'

Many modern buildings have been designed to minimise their environmental impact, but with their complex technologies they don’t always perform as well as expected. And they certainly don’t have a monopoly on sustainability. Many historic buildings perform surprisingly well, and they can do even better with a few simple extras such as roof insulation, thick curtains and a new boiler.

Recent studies show that Victorian schools can equal the performance of those designed to the latest building standards, and easily surpass the highly glazed, lightweight schools of the sixties and seventies. The fact that they have lasted so long shows they were well built and adaptable, and they have long since repaid the energy embodied in their construction.

Low-energy technologies are expensive, complicated and demanding to maintain, and have an unknown lifespan. Designers like gadgets but users find them perplexing, and if they go even slightly wrong, their benefit can be entirely lost. Complexity is the enemy of longevity, and so too of sustainability. Modernists have always been fascinated with technology, or the image of it, but simple passive solutions will be the longest lasting.

Traditional buildings have huge advantages: thermal mass, natural ventilation and daylighting for a start. Of course we should make new buildings energy-efficient, but true sustainability has got to mean improving those we have rather than starting from scratch.