Green building has become enormously more popular because of energy problems. We have all seen a hundred different proposed ideas about how a green building is self-sufficient on energy and will revolutionize the world, but lets find out which really may.

ROTATING TOWER:

The Rotating Tower is a proposed idea by David Fisher. He claims that all the needed energy will be created by wind turbines. Check out our post on this if you missed it! - Rotating Tower

TEATRO DEL AGUA:

Even if the world can break it’s dependence on oil, it will still have to deal with the lack of fresh water. The Teatro del Agua (Theater of water) uses a carbon neutral desalination method, and will also serve as a performing arts center for Spain.

DICE HOUSE:

The Dice House is a 9 x 9 meter cube zero carbon home. The Dice House can stand alone, or be attached to multiple dwellings. The large umbrella that can be seen in the pictures insulates the house and collects solar energy.

LAS VEGAS ‘CITYCENTER’:

Welcome to the largest privately financed development in North America. The CityCenter is an $8 billion joint venture between MGM Mirage and Dubai World. CityCenter will have hotels, casinos, restaurants, retail space, as well as integrating green building as much as possible. The will use environmentally friendly materials, using natural light, and incorporating an onsite co-generation power plant are some of these methods.

SOFT HOUSE:

Architect Sheila Kennedy has designed the Soft House, a structure that harvests energy through solar-energy-collecting textiles hung in the home like curtains. These thin-film photovoltaic textiles can create close to 16,000 watt-hours of electricity, providing about half of the home’s power. Though the high cost of this solar technology makes the Soft House unlikely to become reality any time soon, Kennedy hopes that the design will show others that renewable energy technologies can be incorporated into structures in creative and unexpected ways.

The world’s first passive house museum is set to be built in Ulricehamn, Sweden, functioning as a visitor’s center. The building’s heat will be supplied entirely by the body heat of visitors and the equipment located inside. Solar cells on the roof will provide part of the energy used to run electrical equipment and heat water. The circular design of the structure will allow efficient circulation of air to enhance the passive heating and cooling of the building.

The Chicago Spire is an ambitious project currently under construction in the Windy City. At 2,000 feet, the spire will be North America’s tallest free-standing structure and the tallest all-residential building in the world. Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and managed by the Shelbourne Development Group, the Chicago Spire was designed to mimic the natural form of a nautilus shell. The structure is anticipated to have a LEED gold rating; it will be outfitted with rainwater harvesting systems, geothermal cooling and high performance glass designed to protect migratory birds. The Chicago Spire is set to be completed in 2011.

Frasers Broadway, a commercial, residential and retail complex, will be Australia’s most sustainable building. The designers, including Pritzker Prize winners Foster & Partners and Ateliers Jean Nouvel, will incorporate such eco-friendly features as a gas-powered co-generation electricity plant, green rooftops, a wastewater recycling plant, smart metering and solar power into the design in an attempt to achieve carbon neutrality. The 250,000 square meter development will be located in the old Kent Brewery in Sydney.

Pelli Clark Pelli architects recently got approval for their design for a new green Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco. The transit center will consist of a glass tower and a five-and-a-half acre public park, and will be packed with sustainable features like green roofs, passive solar shading, wind turbines, a rain and graywater recycling system and geothermal heating and cooling. The aim of the building is to centralize the region’s transportation system while also providing a community space. The center will be completed by 2014.

China’s population is exploding while its industrial ventures are producing more pollution than ever – a combination that makes it difficult to be eco-friendly. A new sustainable housing project called Habitat 2020 aims to be one of the leaders in bringing environmental initiatives to this growing country. The Habitat 2020 building will feature an ‘active skin’: a membrane between the exterior and interior walls that will absorb air, water and light from outside and dispatch it inside as clean filtered water, natural air conditioning and electricity. The same funnels on the membrane that pull these resources in will also emit clean, CO2-free air from inside the building. This urban megalopolis is set to be complete in 2020.

Another project that aims to act as a ‘living’ structure is the California Academy of Sciences museum set to open in San Francisco this fall. The museum will have a 2.5 acre, undulating green roof that will integrate it into the surrounding Golden Gate Park. The 400,000-square-foot, $484 million structure will likely be the first public building to achieve a platinum LEED rating. Designer Renzo Piano has incorporated a planetarium, a rainforest with free-flying birds, a coral reef home to 4,000 fish in a saltwater aquarium and a natural history museum into the building.

Maul Dwellings designed the ‘Landscape House’, which won the AIA’s 2006 Committee on Design competition to design “a house for an ecologist”. The house not only features a double roof for enhanced air circulation, louvered shutters to harvest energy, a ‘Water Pod’ to house efficient plumbing systems and a solar dehumidifier unit to capture moisture from the air for drinking water, it also is designed for deconstruction and reuse. Though this innovative structure wasn’t originally intended for widespread residential use, its intelligent eco-friendly features make it a great source of inspiration for future green homes.

Kuwait will soon have its first LEED skyscraper. The Sabah Al Ahmed International Finance Center will be a 1.2 million square foot, 40-story tower that includes four stacked courtyard atriums ranging from 8 to 13 stories each. The tower will generate some of its own energy from a photovoltaic system as well as the wind turbines that will crown the roof. Inside will be office space and a 4-star business class hotel. The International Finance Center (ICF) has been precertified at the gold level under the LEED rating system.

London-based Foster + Partners, who are also working on the aforementioned Frasers Broadway complex, have another green complex in store. This one will be located in Singapore City, measuring 150,000 square meters and set for multi-use functioning. The complex’s exterior will be covered with solar cells, and direct sunlight will also be harvested by tall ribbon-like canopies rising into the skyline. The slanted design of the facades will allow wind to flow into the building for a natural cooling effect, and vertical green spaces will provide ambient temperature moderation. The building will also be equipped with a rainwater harvesting system, geothermal heating, chilled beams and an ice storage system for cooling.

The furthest-reaching green wonder of the future is IwamotoScott Architect’s vision of San Francisco in 2108. This stunning winner of the History Channel’s City of the Future competition shows what a totally eco-conscious San Francisco could look like 100 years from now, complete with algae-harvesting towers, geothermal energy ‘mushrooms’ and fog catchers to distill fresh water from the city’s foggy atmosphere. Designed to make the most of the area’s microclimate and geology, Hydro-Net is a network of both above-ground and underground systems that takes the need for alternative energy sources in mind with a connected network of water, power collection and distribution systems. Carbon nanotube walls would