Sunday, March 11, 2012

Design

This is the Eastgate Centre! (It's the building with lots of chimneys on top.)
 
What makes it truly remarkable is that this "green" building is ventilated and cooled by natural means, inspired by the self-cooling termite mounds of Africa!
 Eastgate Centre, Harare, Zimbabwe -  image by David Brazier,

  (CC BY-SA license)
 source: this Wikipedia article
Opened in1996 in central Harare, it is a mid-rise shopping centre and office block which has over 5 000 m2 of retail space, 26 000 m2 of office space and parking for over 400 cars.

Inside, a comfortable temperature is achieved without conventional air-conditioning and heating so it consumes less than 10% of the energy that other buildings of the same size require. Isn't that fantastic?

The architect, Mick Pearce, specialises in eco-friendly buildings that are low cost and low maintenance, using resources that are available locally. Unsurprisingly, he has won several awards for his designs.



and here.


For more info on this Sunday Post Challenge visit Jake's blog.

7 comments:

  1. It is amazing that Afric is considered behind...needing our help...what we need to do is support them through encouraging creative minds such as these...minds who look for solutions not profits

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  2. Absolutely!
    Thank you for stopping by.
    With so much bad news coming out of Africa it is lovely to find that great things happen there, too.

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  3. That is WAY cool. Thanks for sharing.

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  4. Hi, in the Algarve there's a similar approach at AlmaVerde they have the Coolhouse Project (http://www.almaverde.com/villa-designs/coolhouse-project.html) and they also some particular building specifications (http://www.almaverde.com/villa-designs/building-specifications.html).

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for this information. I didn't know that. It's nice to see that ecological solutions are gradually being adopted around the world.

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