Other Examples of Sustainable Architecture
Embedded Files
Colombian Coffee Houses
Colombian Coffee Houses
A Colombian construction company is building affordable housing that is also eco-friendly. The company called Woodpecker WPC is using coffee husks and other waste to create prefabricated blocks that can be made into houses. The blocks are lightweight making the kits easy to transport anywhere, even remote, hard to reach places. The houses are easy to be constructed, and the company has built around 3,000 buildings and have made 20 schools. Most recently, the company built 680 homes in the Upper Guajira region of Colombia (Tesler).
The Whitest Paint
The Whitest Paint
Using paint to cool buildings is not a new idea, but using a new type of paint developed by researchers at Purdue University, this could be an even better idea for fighting climate change. The paint reflect 98% of sunlight in tests, causing painted surfaces to be cooled by about 4.5ºC (40.1ºF). The paint also reflects radiating infrared rays, this is how the paint can be more powerful when cooling buildings. Professor Xiulin Ruan estimates that by painting a roof that is 1,000 square feet, you could save 10 kilowatts of cooling power. The research team has been working on a commercially available version of the paint that will hopefully be available in about one to two years. The team is weather testing the paint and doing long term tests of the paint. But making the paint commercially available could help reduce the amount of energy used to cool buildings, in turn helping with climate change (Carrington).
Green Walls
Green Walls
One form of Green architecture are green walls, these walls are covered with plants to help make cleaner air. The wall remove gases like carbon dioxide from the air and produces oxygen. One of the biggest living walls in the world is covered in 400,000 plants. The living wall that is located on an 11 story building can remove over eight tons of carbon dioxide and produce six tons of oxygen each year. Green wall are great for buildings that have historical value or cannot be taken down, they can still contribute to stopping global warming without needing major renovations (Crook).
Page updated
Report abuse