4/17, Grimshaw Architects

On April 17th Cole and I visited Grimshaw Architects to learn a little bit about how they interpret green design and encorporate it into their projects.  We were given a very brief tour of the office and shown some of the models of projects in the making.  One of their projects is the Fulton Street Transit Center which is being built right now in lower Manhattan.  We learned that they like to design their buildings to adapt and work with the earth.  They use the natural characteristics of the place they are building to help design what they are going to build.  I found many of their projects very interesting and extremely complex.  They have been building a series of botanical gardens that use very sustianable techniques to keep them running.  The one that they built near Cornwall, England, was used to film the James Bond movie, Die Another Day.  They also built a movable building for some sort of worlds fair in Sevilla, Spain.  This building used a waterfall that went in between two windows to block out the UV rays that cause a lot of heat.  In another building in the Canarie Islands they were able to convert salt water into clean drinkable water without going through the expensive, energy guzzling process of desalination.  Using the heat of solar panels they were able to evaporate the water and then make it hit a cold spot where it then turned back into drops of water.  Instead of using the more conventional ways and designs that are being used by architects today, Grimshaw has been implementing their own great ideas to help people efficiently use what they are given.

-Quinn