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10 Inspiring Green Office Blocks

By Queuebot in Architecture on Apr 23, 2009 at 7:48 am



If you’re going to spend 8 hours a day at work in the office, it might as well be somewhere healthy and inspiring. Unfortunately the characterless and insipid glass edifices that so blight our inner cities are far removed from being either attractive or motivating, never mind sustainable. But there is a distinct wind of change breathing fresh life into the workplace with a new breed of elegantly designed sustainable offices. It may sound inconceivable, but these are the sort of places you actually might not mind spending the best part of your week in. StaoilHydro headquarters (pictured) is just one.

The futuristic new HQ of Norway’s StaoilHydro features five separate wings piled on top of one another in a seemingly haphazard manner. It saves energy by utilising renewable geothermal heat in its district heating and cooling system. Hot water (or cold depending on the depth from which it is extracted) is pumped out of a nearby disused coal mine straight into the offices’ radiators. Once the water in the radiators has cooled, it is pumped back into the mine to be naturally reheated by the Earth.

Link – via thrivecore

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Arby.


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COMMENT
  1. nickolas_warner
    Apr 23rd, 2009 at 11:26 am

    while it may be heating efficiant, i wonder how much more enerhy it took to create that building than just a regular square one

  2. felixthecat
    Apr 23rd, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    Inhuman structures worthy of Kunstler's "Eyesore of the Month" award.

  3. Gadget Sleuth
    Apr 23rd, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    felix: you said it! Uggggly.

  4. Video Game Dork
    Apr 23rd, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    That building is clearly white (and silvery at the windows). :P

  5. Kalel
    Apr 23rd, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    Ugly buildings attract fewer tenants, therefore saving quite a bit of energy. Here, then, is one of the most energy-saving buildings on Earth, using no energy at all, every year.

    http://www.esquire.com/the-side/DESIGN/hotel-of-doom-012808

  6. Alyssa
    Apr 23rd, 2009 at 9:28 pm

    At first I thought it was the Perimeter Institute (Saucier + Perrotte) but not even teh same architects

    http://www.vmzinc-us.com/images/Portfolio/Perimeter/04_5230_3_smaller. jpg

    Still, though, much has to be said for incorporating more thought and less redundancies into today's buildings; in fact, building science is coming to be one of the single most important fields in civil engineering.

    I'd take this any day over the "slap together whatever you can as cheaply/quickly as possible while still somehow meeting code (hopefully)...

  7. lambert
    Apr 24th, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    The percentage of energy used over a buildings lifetime is close to 4 times as much energy as it took to build it initially. That is why it is more important to build a better quality builing for it will pay for itself through energy savings.

    However, most people and developers are only thinking about the total amount of square footage they can get for a certain amount of money, which equals strip malls and suburb devlopments.

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