Global Design New York University: LAVA

Monday, January 20, 2014

SPOTLIGHT: Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) | MASDAR CITY CENTRE

LAVA was founded by Chris Bosse, Tobias Wallisser and Alexander Rieck in 2007. It is a network of creative minds with a research and design focus. LAVA is a GLOBAL company, having offices in Sydney, Shanghai, Stuttgart and Abu Dhabi.

"LAVA’s winning design for the city centre of Masdar, the world’s first eco city, includes a plaza, five-star hotel, a convention centre, entertainment complex and retail facilities. The entire area is designed as one continuous, spatial, interactive environment - a ‘loop’. The “Oasis of the Future”, a mediated outdoor space, is an open spatial experience, with solar-powered sunflower umbrellas."

LAVA believes "the future wellbeing of cities around the globe depends on mankind’s ability to develop and integrate sustainable technology."

LAVA is one of the brilliant design firms featured in our forthcoming BOOK!

Stay up-to-date on international news regarding sustainable architecture!

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http://www.l-a-v-a.net/about-lava/ || http://www.l-a-v-a.net/projects/masdar-city-centre/

"LAVA." Masdar City Centre. LAVA, n.d. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Spotlight: LAVA - "Green Climate Fund"

Bonn, Germany

The Federal Republic of Germany’s bid to host the Secretariat of the Green Climate Fund [GCF] in Bonn includes LAVA’s design for the proposed headquarters.

LAVA’s concept is ‘an ecological model project’ and demonstrates LAVA’s motto: ‘green is the new black’.

The vision for international climate protection will be realised in the building design itself, with innovative solutions such as:
• Facades articulate according to building orientation
• Surfaces integrate various means of regenerative energy production
• Photo-voltaics and bioreactors demonstrate the application of the latest technologies
• Building responds to the site to maximize the experience of its natural qualities

With a design inspired by the beautiful setting in the Rhine valley, and with curvilinear forms, natural light wells, roof top gardens and a large sunken terrace for the restaurant, the three level structure will comply with the latest energy and building ecology standards, meeting the highest demands in terms of sustainability (German gold certificate), ecology and energy efficiency (net zero energy).

Green Climate Fund | LAVA

MISSION

Global warming effects pose new challenges to the architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design communities. The immediate response has been a turn toward a host of energy-saving technologies. What has rarely been addressed, however, is the problem of scale. How can the designer make sure that global solutions do not come at the expense of local traditions, cultures, and environments? By placing human rational, emotional, technological, and social needs at the center of our environmental concerns, we propose a new GLOBAL [Global Local Open Border Architecture and Landscape] design initiative.

We seek a Global yet still Local design that can Open the sociopolitical Borders that all too often separate Architecture from its Landscape. The overreaching aim is to develop a language of design that can create proximity between individual responsibility and the current global environmental crisis. We see environmental problems as a crisis of human alienation from the natural world, and our initiative will explore ways in which design can reformat the unfortunate separation. In our plea for proximity between the individual and the global we will explore, in the words of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a design that is "as close to the beyond as to things near" when we evoke "our power to imagine ourselves elsewhere."