environment

The Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill architectural firm has been busy stirring up the world’s skyline with a slew of lean, green superstructures that push the energy-neutral envelope.

Flipping through new magazines today can feel like shaking the colorful branches of a glossy tree, with leaves falling out from between its limbs. Only they’re falling into your lap, and sometimes 6 at a time. Magazine subscription cards, fouling up the pre-buy flip through at the newsstand and littering up your living room. Thought subscribing would keep them at bay?

The 18-story façade of James Law Cybertecture’s new Pixel Tower in Dubai was inspired by the moving bubbles in a champagne glass and built for the young, techie and trendy. Intended for the Dubai Waterfront, Pixel Tower draws on passive solar techniques and strategic facade geometry to minimize heat gain on the structure’s south side and optimize views out over the Persian Gulf to the north.

This might not be the most practical outdoor light in the world, but what the Firewinder lacks in pedestrian utility it makes up for in sheer engaging awesomeness. Transforming wind into light, the Firewinder is a hanging, wind-powered LED light that can be powered by the smallest breeze.

High Line 23, or HL23, is a new green building from Neil M. Denari Architects that is currently under construction and turning heads soon in the Chelsea art gallery district on Manhattan’s west side. The structure is a 14 floor mixed use of gallery space and condominiums with amazing views of the evolving High Line elevated park preservation and green space reuse project.