Hasta La Ideas

Photo from Flickr user PghFun1

PNC’s green wall towers at nearly 2,400 in square feet which is the size of two tennis courts. Wow!

According to a post over at Forecast Earth, the idea is catching on.

Like green roofs—their perpendicular counterparts—green walls are covered in vegetation and provide the benefits of natural insulation and removal of air pollutants. PNC, which provides banking and wealth management services, estimates it will be 25 percent cooler behind the wall than the ambient summer temperatures.

The PNC wall features more than 15,000 ferns, sedums, brass buttons and other plants that create a swirling pattern of varying hues of green above the company’s logo. They are divided among hundreds of 2-by-2-foot aluminum panels that were anchored onto the building’s frame after part of the granite facade was removed.

Joanne Westphal, a landscape architecture professor at Michigan State University and part of the school’s Green Roof Research Program, states that: “the biggest benefit to green walls is their ability to help cool buildings through shading. They also help capture rainwater and release it more slowly into the atmosphere and stormwater systems.

via:

Austrian architects Coop Himmelb(l)au have designed an energy-generating canopy for a passageway in Perugia, Italy. (more…)

Marks Barfield Architects of London have designed a house where sections could be elevated on towers at the touch of a button. (more…)

Following the American Institute of Architect’s glum report issued last week about the forecast for continued declines in construction in 2010, there’s a little good news to help pick your spirits back up. Unfortunately, it’s very, very little. The AIA has released their monthly Billings Index and things have ticked up again, moving to 43.4, increasing from 42.8 the month before. Anything over 50 means there’s been an increase in billings, something we haven’t seen around these parts in what seems like years. But the positive spin we can put on this is that, even though these slight bumps upward don’t seem to ever indicate a steady trend, at least it wasn’t December, which saw the first time the numbers had fallen after several months of cautious, anxious optimism.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Zurich architect Chris Lim has completed two adjoined family homes in Zurich, centred around concrete stairwells. (more…)