MediaTic Barcelona: 2011 World Building of the Year

MediaTic at 22@ district

Only a few weeks ago it received the 2011 World Building of the Year Award at the World Arquitecture Festival Awards.

It combines an innovative and sustainable design. One of its more practical if curious features are the inflatable cushions on the facade. These control the light and temperature and make it possible to save on heating and air conditioning, because they inflate and deflate with the light and heat from the sun, preserving the heat and allowing the air conditioning to be switched off.

Interior MediaTic building

The way it works is simple but highly complex: the Teflon membranes inflate with compressed air to contain the heat when the light metres in the membrane detect a certain temperature. The system is controlled by 104 computers.

In fact, it is estimated the MediaTIC‘s design cuts carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere by 114 tonnes a year. “The MediaTIC is a very efficient building. It is a grade A building that cuts carbon dioxide emissions entering the atmosphere by 92%“, says Enric Ruiz-Geli, the architect from the Cloud-9 studio that designed the building, which is located in the 22@ district.

New Landmark in Barcelona: Zaha Hadid Spiralling Tower

Spiralling Tower by Zaha Hadid

The 11-storey building, with its irregularly aligned floors, sea views and large open roof and terrace spaces, will be completed within 18 months, according to Barcelona’s mayor, Jordi Hereu.

The Spiralling Tower will add to Barcelona’s ever-increasing stock of buildings by major architects, with a triangular pavilion by fellow Pritzker winners Jacques Herzog and Pierre De Meuron a close neighbour, and residential buildings and parks by Enric Miralles and Jean Nouvel.
The spiral-shaped tower looks like a dynamic stack of books, each representing one floor out of a total of 11 floors or 48 metres. The floors are offset, permitting a generous sprinkling of terraces, gardens and outdoor spaces.The campus will contain an auditorium, shopping malls, teaching facilities and a series of public spaces on the ground floor.
The building will be almost entirely covered with glass to provide sea views and capture daylight: “I designed the tower to provide the best possible view from every room in the building”, says Zaha Hadid.

Zaha Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Winner of many international competitions, theoretically influential and groundbreaking, a number of Hadid’s winning designs were initially never built: notably, The Peak Club in Hong Kong (1983) and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994). In 2002 Hadid won the international design competition to design Singapore’s one-north masterplan. In 2005, her design won the competition for the new city casino of Basel, Switzerland. In 2004 Hadid became the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Previously, she had been awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to architecture. She is a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In 2006, Hadid was honored with a retrospective spanning her entire work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In that year she also received an Honorary Degree from the American University of Beirut.

More inf@:  Zaha Hadid Official Webisite   .::.   Wikipedia  .::.  Archdaily