By John Gunstone

21 August 2017

The Passive Low Energy Architecture Conference (PLEA) is an annual event that brings a network of experts together for a discourse on sustainable architecture and urban design. Max Fordham engineer, John Gunstone reviews some of the speakers from across the event. This is the third in his series.

Richard runs through the highlights from WOHA’s recent exhibition, Garden City/Mega City, which explores the theme of bringing green ecosystems into high density vertical architecture.

What struck me were the lateral design interventions that led to new, innovate architectures:

• Rather than building the car-park underground, it was built above ground and was therefore naturally ventilated, the savings generated funded the green facades that give the building its unique identity.
• A residential mass housing block split into “villages”, each village with their own open and public greenspace to help engender a sense of community in an otherwise homogenous block.
• A multi-storey, expanded mesh, planted “hat” that sits upon the hotel rooftop terrace. This relatively low cost intervention creates a windbreak, provides shading, and gives a sense of sanctuary that transforms the feel of an otherwise exposed open rooftop space.

http://skyscraper.org/EXHIBITIONS/WOHA/woha.html