Barcelona | Inhabitat

2009 World Architecture Festival Winners Announced

The 2009 World Architecture Festival took place this week in Barcelona, drawing great minds to discuss, learn, share and award excellent architectural designs and completed projects. This year’s theme dealt with how to achieve Less With More and the relationship between cities and architecture, with climate change and sustainability playing key roles. The winners of the festival have been announced and we want to highlight four of the completed buildings that stand out for their environmentally sensitive and sustainable designs. Read on to see all of these noteworthy buildings.

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The Beautifully Unfolding Ocho Casas Housing Complex

by Jorge Chapa, 11/17/08

Frequent passerby in the neighborhood of Santa Margarita, Spain may find themselves a bit lost when they can’t seem to find the white wall they just passed by. Appearing at first as a simple sheet of folded paper, this beautiful white-walled building features a facade of panels that open in brilliant pops of color. Designed by Romera y Ruiz Arquitectos, “Ocho casas inscritas y tres patios” is a sustainably constructed social housing complex with a facade that changes according to the wishes of its inhabitants!

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Nokia ‘Remade’ Concept Phone Made From Recycled Materials

by Ali Kriscenski, 02/18/08

Nokia has caught our green design attention once again with the recent unveiling of ‘Remade’, a concept phone made almost entirely of recycled materials. The prototype was introduced at Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona last week revealing Nokia’s vision for recycled material use in mobile phones of the future. From the looks of ‘Remade’, Nokia’s products of tomorrow will consume less natural resources, reduce landfill waste and be more energy efficient.

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SUSTAINABLE PUBLIC HOUSING by Foreign Office Architects

by Jorge Chapa, 07/09/07

Faced with a shortage of public housing, the City of Madrid commissioned Foreign Office Architects to create a sustainable multi-unit residential alternative for its new public housing development at Carabanchel. Simply known as Carabanchel 16, this building shows how you can is a simple housing design transformed into a beautiful canvas of light and shadow using the simplest tool in an architect’s arsenal: shading devices.