The worlds most environmentally friendly buildings list is full of amazing buildings both high-rise and low-rise that aim to be more friendly to our environment. Initiatives like passive heating and cooling to reduce resource usage, construction using more environmentally friendly methods or are supplied by green energy.
We’re not only environmentally concious in the UK and Europe, the entire world is playing their part to reduce their carbon footprint and improve the state of our world.
CBK Pension Towers
Kenya
CBK Pension Towers, opened by Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, was designed by Kenyan architects with some cool green credentials. This building has two 500kva synchronised generators synced together efficiently.
To help reduce on its carbon footprint, the towers include 30kw hybrid solar systems with smart meters to provide energy for the common areas. To ensure everything operates as it should, there is also a 1000kva voltage stabilizer for the entire building.
Apple HQ
USA
Back in 2014, we billed the Apple Campus 2 as the greenest building ever. We’d like to stand by that, though with more and more environmentally friendly projects sure to pop up in the coming years, we can’t wait to find the next one.
The buildings make use of renewable sources of energy to fulfil their energy demands and planted around 7,000 trees. However, those trees are around the campus to improve its environment, not in a rainforest. Anyway, a tree is a tree and they will help keep energy costs down, reducing the overall ambient temperature of the campus by providing shade.
In development of the campus, an emphasis was placed on using recycled materials so as to save the earth’s precious resources.
The Green House
London
Owned by The Ethical Property Company, The Green House is one of the new breed of UK carbon friendly workspaces we’re seeing appear across London. It has a double skin façade to create an acoustic buffer, thermal buffer and natural ventilation which will help save energy.
There is a roof garden, to provide relaxation for people working there, solar panels on the roof to help offset any non-green energy use
The Green House’s green credentials include the use of passive energy like the double skin façade, using daylight to help reduce unnecessary energy wastage. They also use standard features such as absence detection lighting controls.
Not only is the building now super efficient, during the renovation of their building, they also managed to save 1,600 tonnes of CO₂.
Kochi Airport
India
In 2015, the Indian city of Kochi’s Cochin International Airport (COK)became the world’s first international airport powered entirely by solar energy, as we covered at the time. Cochin’s incredible effort was recognised in 2018 when they pickled up a Champion of the Earth award, which is the highest environmental honour granted by the United Nations.
Cochin International airport has continued to drive innovation in the Kochi area with ventures including agri-voltaic farming. Efficiency is high on the order of priorities with water used to keep the solar panels clean being diverted to irrigate the crops. Read more about the latest developments in Kochi from December 2021 here.
Ascent Tower
USA
This amazing tower in America has become the world’s tallest timber frame building. So why is timber a good thing? A shout back to older times when all buildings were built using a timber frame and not concrete and steel cores.
For so many years now, we’ve been pouring reinforced concrete to make building structures and then of course there are the steel frame skyscrapers made famous by cities like New York. Those kind of buildings use a lot of resources and that’s just to construct them. What will we do when it’s time to demolish concrete and steel buildings.
Returning to wood gives us structures with materials that are environmentally friendly to produce and at the end of its life, this building’s materials won’t create any issues for our environment.
MediaCityUK
Salford
Peel L&P buildings across the north of England and into Scotland became the first in the UK to achieve net zero carbon status, verified by third parties against the UK Green Building Council’s 2019 definition.
We’ve chosen MediaCityUK in Salford just outside Manchester as the environmentally friendly building we’d like to highlight because it’s one of the regional BBC headquarters.
Get in touch and let us know any buildings you think we absolutely must include on this list of the world’s most environmentally friendly buildings.