In the depths of northeastern India, in one of the wettest places on earth, bridges aren't built - they're grown. The living root bridges of Cherrapungee from the roots of the Ficus elastica tree.

This tree produces a series of secondary roots from higher up its trunk and can comfortably perch atop huge boulders along the riverbanks, or even in the middle of the rivers themselves. Via: Atlasobscura.com

The latest concept design from Vincent Callebaut Architects – the Dragonfly – has been designed with the intention of easing the ever-increasing need for ecological and environmental self-sufficiency in the urban cityscape. The proposed development, designed around the Southern bank of Roosevelt Island in New York, follows a vertical farm design.

Spanning 132 floors and 600 vertical meters, the Dragonfly can accommodate 28 different agricultural fields for the production of fruit, vegetables, grains, meat and dairy. A combination of solar and wind power make Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut’s Dragonfly concept %100 self sufficient. Via Vincent Callebaut

Jacques Rougerie, a French architect, is one of the most interesting architects/designers I've come across. He has drawn space stations, sea vessels and amazing underwater archeological museum

Photo: Doron wikipedia

The incredible well of Chand Baori near Jaipur, India. The amazing 13-stories well was built in the 9th century and has 3,500 narrow steps. Don’t fall - at 100 feet (~30 m) deep, it’s a long way down. Via odditycentral

Green architecture comes in many forms though lately it seems like these forms are stranger than ever. Urban skyscraper farms? Floating eco-cities? Glowing solar towers? Turbine-driven skyscrapers? Magnetically levitated wind collectors? Where does it end?

Take a look at seven of the most amazing real and conceptual designs currently at the forefront of ecological innovation. These examples push the limits of ecological architecture and contemporary urban design discourse.Via weburbanist

James Law Cybertecture International brings high-tech solutions to large scale structures through innovative ideas for intelligent living. The latest future forward design from this firm is the Cybertecture Egg, commissioned by Vijay Associate (Wadhwa Developers) for Mumbai, India. The 32,000 sq m egg-shaped building will combine “iconic architecture, environmental design, intelligent systems, and new engineering to create an awe-inspiring landmark in the city
Via World Architecture News

UK-based Popularchitecture has proposed a 5,000 foot tall mega structure that will supposedly "house a million people in one go."

Apparently, by 2015 London will need to provide housing for a million more people. Just look at this thing! It's so big it'd require its own system of government, with the building split up into neighborhoods, villages, and super-districts that would have their own representatives

Product Page, via io9

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A spate of green skyscrapers have shot up in the last few years, as people learn that buildings account for more CO2 emissions than any other single source. At the same time, we’ve seen a rise in greenwashing by companies recognizing the market value of green and making false claims to fit the category. In an exemplary meeting of these two trends, we have just discovered a building in progress in Mumbai that calls itself the greenest of all the buildings in the Maximum City of 13 million people. If ever there were a literal interpretation of a deceptive green facade, this is it.

Renderings of the 27-story Antilla building depict a highrise that couldn’t be greener. It’s covered in foliage, with living walls enclosing all four sides, hanging gardens and green rooftop. Just a few days ago, the architects boasted about its environmental features – primarily that the walls of plants will increase green space and combat urban heat island effect. But look behind the green facade, and as far as we can tell, there’s nothing else sustainable about the materials or construction. Architecture firm Perkins + Will doesn’t include the project on their site, but this week mentioned no other green features besides the literal green.

The Antilla is being built for Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s largest private sector enterprise (with revenues exceeding $25 billion), and the Ambani family, who own the company. Reliance is a petrochemical corporation whose earnings come from exploring, producing, refining and marketing oil and gas. They are the world’s largest producer of polyester fiber, and a runner-up for several others.


The building will stand on Mumbai’s Altamount Road, where real estate costs as much as $1800/square foot. Although Mumbai is the densest city in the world, with almost 30,000 people per square kilometer, this 500+ foot tall building will only be 27 floors where normally a building of this height would be 60, so that each floor can have exceptionally high ceilings, and 35,000 square feet of the entire building area will be the residential quarters of the Ambani’s.

Sustainability is most commonly defined as The ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Unless this goal is applied to everyone, it’s impossible for us to have a sustainable global society. Sustainability is about humanity as much as it is about greenery. Living walls are lovely, but they’re not a free ticket to environmental integrity.

Via Skyscraper City

Green skyscrapers seem to be all the rage these days, and now India is jumping on the bandwagon with FXFowle Architects’ India Tower, currently being built in South Mumbai to house a new Park Hyatt Hotel. According to the designers, India Tower will be the greenest skyscraper in the entire country, boasting rainwater harvesting, green materials, and a possible US LEED Gold rating.

Strikingly similar to Tianjin’s ‘Pile of Boxes’, the 60 story, 301 meter tower is subdivided into different modules, each slightly rotated to the next. Each module is meant to signal a change in function of the tower, one being a hotel, the next residential units, one next a retail area and so on. In terms of green features, the structure would integrate everything from common-sense green strategies like shaded windows, natural ventilation, and proper site orientation and zoning to green technologies such as rainwater harvesting and eco-friendly materials.

It is a good thing that developers and architects are trying to minimize the resource consumption of skyscrapers. We’ve seen some rather innovative examples in the past, some going as far as designing a building around sustainable features, such a wind turbines, like in the case of Castle House in London. Most of those have been in the United States or Britain, with a few lofty renderings coming from Dubai, so it is great to see interest in sustainable architecture in other parts of the world. The building is expected to be finished by 2

+ India Tower

+ FXFowle Architects