Eco-Tech: Sustainable Architecture and High Technology

The high-tech architecture movement embodied by seminal buildings such as Paris's Centre Pompidou and London's Lloyd's Building has undergone a subtle but palpable transformation over the last twenty years. While daring feats of structural engineering and sheer expression of function still mark many recent projects, a new generation of buildings--and architects--has expanded the vocabulary of this architectonic language, and evolved an architecture with different aims. The most significant of these objectives is to create a sustainable architecture. This international survey presents projects completed in the last five years that use high-tech forms and materials in environmentally intelligent structures. Bringing together new approaches by established practitioners (Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, and Michael Hopkins) with a new generation of architects (Thomas Herzog, Von Gerkan Marg, and Design Antenna), the book presents the most exciting and ingenious projects in detail. The introduction charts the evolution of high-tech architecture and its progression toward more ecological concerns; the movement as a whole is considered in a broader architectural context. At the book's heart is a selection of forty of the world's most sophisticated projects, each with a description of its unique architectural and technological features, as well as extensive plans, drawings, and sketches. A complete reference section includes architect biographies and technical details of each project.