WOW FACTOR

The spectacular new Dhs376 million V&A Dundee, designed by award-winning Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, utilises geothermal energy drawn from 30 boreholes that extend 200 metres deep below ground.

The 8000-square metre building opened last month and has already been compared to Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao for the way in which it has created the wow factor.
There are no straight external walls; two-and-a-half thousand pre-cast rough stone panels, each weighing up to 3000 kilograms and spanning up to four metres, create the appearance of a Scottish cliff face.

The V&A’s first outpost outside London, and Scotland’s first design museum, the V&A Dundee will feature 1650 square metres of gallery space with exhibits, including a 15th century Book of Hours and a 13.5-metre-long oak panelled room designed by the celebrated Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
But equal care has been paid to identifying the most appropriate form of renewable energy for the museum.

The use of wind turbines, solar panels, photovoltaic cells, biomass and river source heat pumps were all analysed before geothermal was identified as the most appropriate option for heating and cooling the building, supplemented by air source heat pumps on the roof.
These provide direct renewable energy for V&A Dundee, with 800,000 kilowatt hours per annum of heating and 500,000 kWh/annum of cooling.

Around 500,000 people are expected to visit V&A Dundee in its first year.

CARBON NEUTRAL

Danish architectural firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has won an international competition to design the new Brussels headquarters of Solvay, an advanced materials and chemical company.
The project is expected to be certified BREEAM Excellent, and will be carbon neutral thanks to the utilisation of geothermal energy, solar cells and natural ventilation, all set on a rolling green campus.
Tiago Pereira, Partner at Schmidt Hammer Lassen, said: “We translated Solvay’s desire for a welcoming, innovative, sustainable headquarters into an architecturally bold statement that reflects its core values and creates a new identity.”

The new building, located on the 22-hectare site that has housed many of Solvay’s activities since 1953, has been conceived as a fluid, collaborative space where teams and partners can co-create and interact.

A new large green roof, designed as a geometric garden, offers unobstructed views of the surroundings and also features skylights and large sunken gardens that provide the workshop areas beneath with access to the outdoors.

PLASTIC OFF THE MENU

Meliá Hotels International has announced its intention to eliminate all single-use plastics within its properties within a year.

Executive Vice President and CEO Gabriel Escarrer said the move will see plastic bottles, cups, bags, straws and coasters immediately replaced by reusable items, leading to a saving of the 15+ tonnes of CO2 emissions that are generated by waste disposal per year.
Escarrer added: “Great customer experiences have to be compatible with respect for the planet.

“Plastic pollution is a global challenge which affects all destinations, and tourism business depends on the sustainability of destinations, something of which we are very aware at Meliá Hotels International.”

More than 22 million plastic bottles were disposed of at Meliá Hotels International properties globally during 2017.

TOP GEAR

Season 5 of the ABB FIA Formula E Championship gets underway in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 15 December, when a new Batmobile-esque all-electric racing car will hit the track in anger for the first time.

Competing for glory will be a total of 22 ‘Gen2’ vehicles that have double the energy storage capacity of the original Gen1 car. They can complete an entire race, bringing an end to mid-event car swaps, and boast tremendous power as they can accelerate from 0 to 100 kilometres per hour in only 2.8 seconds and reach a top speed of 280 km/h.

The launch of the Gen2 car also underlines major advances in battery and electric motor technology which, it is hoped, will eventually be utilised by everyday electric road cards.

Formula E Founder and CEO Alejandro Agag said: “This car represents the future of racing.
“When we started Formula E, our goal was to break the mould and challenge the status quo – bringing a revolution to motorsport. This next-generation car represents that revolution.”
The championship will be contested over 13 races in 12 cities across five continents, concluding with a double-header finale in New York in July.

Photo: Infinitude

GREEN FOR GO

The façade of the Oasia Hotel in Singapore’s central business district will eventually be completely covered by 21 species of creepers and vines.

Designed by local architectural company WOHA, the 190-metre tower is also home to three large verandas – on the 6th, 12th and 21st floors – as well as a roof terrace, which is surrounded and protected by a ten-storey screen that will also be gradually overgrown.

WOHA, seeking to deviate from constructing a conventional sealed-off air-conditioned tower, instead attempted to redefine what a high-rise can be in humid tropical climates.

The ‘living tower’ also encourages cross-ventilation to help cool its open areas, while another 33 different species of plants and trees have been chosen to improve biodiversity in this part of the city centre.

The sky gardens were designed by Spanish architect Patricia Urquiola, who was responsible for all interiors as well as the outdoor spaces of the hotel.

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MASS APPEAL

Due to be completed in the summer of 2020 is Terrace House, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban’s Vancouver waterfront condominium, which will become the tallest hybrid wood structure in North America.

The top seven stories of this 19-floor project by PortLiving will, for the first time in Canada and the United States, feature exposed mass timber following official approval from the city of Vancouver. This was achieved after a process of performance-based fire and structural engineering tests which demonstrated that this hybrid mass timber structure is as safe, if not safer, than a conventional concrete or steel high-rise.

And the approval is seen as a major step forward in Vancouver’s goal of becoming the greenest city in the country.

Wood is a sustainable and versatile building material that stores, rather than emits, carbon dioxide for the life of the structure and beyond. The environmental and performance benefits of wood construction also include reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced embodied energy, renewable benefits, and direct occupant and builder health benefits.

Homes within the upper timber levels will feature vertical and horizontal wood structural beams and columns of Douglas Fir harvested from sustainably managed forests 700 kilometres away in the Kootenay region of British Colombia.

Terrace House is a development of just 20 unique homes, almost half of which occupy entire floorplates. Custom features, from door handles to cabinet pulls, can be found throughout and have been designed by Shigeru Ban, while each residence will boast a full suite of smart home technologies, museum-quality glazing plus fully-integrated air conditioning and heating systems.

BARGING AHEAD

Due to begin sailing later this year are emissions-free barges propelled by electric motors.

Dutch company Port-Liner has developed the e-Powerbox, a shock- and vibration-free container battery which will soon be used by the GVT Group of Logistics on two barges deployed between Tilburg, in the south of the Netherlands, and the sea ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.

These barges are 110 metres long and can sail for approximately 18-35 hours when using four e-Powerboxes.

The GVT Group will also be using five smaller fully electric barges on regular runs between the small container terminal in Budel and the Belgian port of Antwerp.

Windmill parks will be used to help generate the electricity needed to charge the barges’ batteries, while solar energy will also be utilised as part of this innovative project, which is being supported by the European Commission.

WIND POWER

Plans have been unveiled for the world’s largest and most powerful offshore wind turbine.

The Haliade-X 12 MW, currently being developed by GE Renewable Energy, will produce 45 per cent more energy than any other rival product thanks to its size and advanced digital capabilities.

It towers 260 metres over the sea and is more than five times the size of the Arc de Triomphe, and features 107-metre blades – each one longer than the size of a football field.

It is estimated that one Haliade-X 12 MW turbine will generate enough clean power for up to 16,000 households, and up to one million European households can be provided for by a 750 MW windfarm configuration.

Jérôme Pécresse, President and CEO of GE Renewable Energy, said: “The renewables industry took more than 20 years to install the first 17 GW of offshore wind. Today, the industry forecasts that it will install more than 90 GW over the next 12 years.

“This is being driven by lower electricity costs [thanks to] scale and technology. The Haliade-X shows GE’s commitment to the offshore wind segment and will set a new benchmark for cost of electricity, thus driving more offshore growth.”

CLEAN MOVE

Tech giant Apple has announced that its facilities worldwide are now powered with 100% clean energy.

Its achievement covers retail stores, offices, data centres and co-located facilities in some 43 countries, including China, India, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Apple has also declared that nine manufacturing partners have made a commitment to power all of their Apple production with 100% clean energy, bringing the total number of supplier commitments to 23.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said: “We’re going to keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible with the materials in our products, the way we recycle them, our facilities and our work with suppliers to establish new creative and forward-looking sources of renewable energy, because we know the future depends on it.”

Solar arrays and wind farms – as well as emerging technologies such as biogas fuel cells, micro hydration generation systems and energy storage technologies – are all utilised by Apple, whose new headquarters building in Cupertino, California, has been certified as the largest LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum-certified office building in North America.

It is powered by 100% renewable energy from multiple sources, including a 17-megawatt onsite rooftop solar installation and four megawatts of biogas fuel cells, and controlled by a microgrid with battery storage. It also gives clean energy back to the public grid during periods of low occupancy.

RADICAL TECHNOLOGY

UPS has unveiled what it calls “radical new charging technology” to help the company operate its London-based fleet of electric vehicles (EVs) without requiring an expensive upgrade to its power supply grid.

The global giant had been running 65 EVs from a central site in the British capital but announced that its entire fleet of 170 trucks based there will soon be composed entirely of electric vehicles, thanks to the use of onsite energy storage batteries and a game-changing smart grid.

This major advance – the first of its kind on this scale anywhere in the world – signals an end to reliance on internal combustion engines and is the result of the Smart Electric Urban Logistics (SEUL) project with UK Power Networks and Cross River Partnership, with funding secured from the UK’s Office for Low Emission Vehicles.

The company believes the day is fast approaching when acquisition costs for EVs will be lower than for diesel counterparts, while also impacting on improving air quality.

UPS has pledged to obtain 25% of the electricity it consumes from renewable energy sources by 2025 and to replace 40% of all ground fuel with sources other than conventional gasoline and diesel.

SMART POWER DOCK

French designer Philippe Starck has collaborated with luxury car manufacturer Bentley to create a stylish smart power dock for the luxury car brand’s new Bentayga Hybrid.

The elegant surround of the statement piece is formed from pressed eco-linen reinforced with bio-sourced thermosetting resin, while the domed frontage is fashioned using a hot-pressure aluminium casting.

Starck, who was already a Bentley owner, said: “I wanted the maximum of intelligence with the minimum of materiality. I wanted it to be a modern art piece: durable, real and avant-garde high-tech.”

The Bentayga Hybrid is Bentley’s first hybrid and combines a V6 petrol engine with battery power that ensures an electric-only range of 50 km. It is also the most efficient and lowest-emission vehicle Bentley has ever made.

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