Algae Attack on Downtown

Here's the winner of Metropolitan magazine's Next Generation 2011 Design Competition, which asked architects to give an eight story US General Services Administration building in Downtown a net-zero energy makeover. Here's what members of Vanderweil and HOK did: "The southern façade is retrofitted with tubes to farm algae which will be feed carbon rich air from the freeway...Much of the building’s waste water will be used in the process and finally filtered in ponds adjacent to the office...The key change to the program is to introduce three full story height light shafts to introduce daylight into 100% of the floor plate." [eVolo, image via]