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