Two 25-story staggered towers sitting atop a plinth make up the design concept for Garden Hill, a Hanging Gardens of Babylon-inspired residential development in Birmingham, England’s second largest city.
Each 25-story tower will be covered in both public and private terraces from top to bottom. The buildings’ unique cascading form (the apexes are reduced to cut down their bulk) allows for the terraces and a public park to exist on top of the plinth. The southern tower’s terraces will be exposed to morning and early afternoon sun while the northern tower’s terraces will receive afternoon and evening sun.
The shared atrium will have plenty of natural daylight and will also be naturally ventilated. Solar panels will help to offset the building’s energy requirements
To further the sustainability of the project, the structure will be made entirely out of CLT as opposed to steel or concrete.
Rendering courtesy of Architects of Invention.
500 small residential units will be spread across the two tower project. 60% of the units will be one-bedroom apartments measuring between about 430 sf and 540 sf. The other 40% will have two bedrooms and provide between 680 sf and 810 sf. 120 to 200 parking spots will also be included.
While the units are small, the building provides large shared facilities for communal living and working. These facilities include music recording studios and small rental units for startups. Ground floor retail is planned on High Street Bordesley. The Garden Hill site is located in Digbeth, a ten-minute walk from the City Center.
Architects of Invention is the architect for the project, which is estimated to cost about $90 million.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
RMJM unveils design details for $1B green development in Turkey
RMJM has unveiled the design for the $1 billion Varyap Meridian development it is master planning in Istanbul, Turkey's Atasehir district, a new residential and business district. Set on a highly visible site that features panoramic views stretching from the Bosporus Strait in the west to the Sea of Marmara to the south, the 372,000-square-meter development includes a 60-story tower, 1,500 resi...
| Aug 11, 2010
'Feebate' program to reward green buildings in Portland, Ore.
Officials in Portland, Ore., have proposed a green building incentive program that would be the first of its kind in the U.S. Under the program, new commercial buildings, 20,000 sf or larger, that meet Oregon's state building code would be assessed a fee by the city of up to $3.46/sf. The fee would be waived for buildings that achieve LEED Silver certification from the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
Colonnade fixes setback problem in Brooklyn condo project
The New York firm Scarano Architects was brought in by the developers of Olive Park condominiums in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn to bring the facility up to code after frame out was completed. The architects designed colonnades along the building's perimeter to create the 15-foot setback required by the New York City Planning Commission.
| Aug 11, 2010
U.S. firm designing massive Taiwan project
MulvannyG2 Architecture is designing one of Taipei, Taiwan's largest urban redevelopment projects. The Bellevue, Wash., firm is working with developer The Global Team Group to create Aquapearl, a mixed-use complex that's part of the Taipei government's "Good Looking Taipei 2010" initiative to spur redevelopment of the city's Songjian District.
| Aug 11, 2010
Recycled Pavers Elevate Rooftop Patio
The new three-story building at 3015 16th Street in Minot, N.D., houses the headquarters of building owner Investors Real Estate Trust (IRET), as well as ground-floor retail space and 71 rental apartments. The 215,000-sf mixed-use building occupies most of the small site, while parking takes up the remainder.
| Aug 11, 2010
Housing America's Heroes 7 Trends in the Design of Homes for the Military
Take a stroll through a new residential housing development at many U.S. military posts, and you'd be hard-pressed to tell it apart from a newer middle-class neighborhood in Anywhere, USA. And that's just the way the service branches want it. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines have all embarked on major housing upgrade programs in the past decade, creating a military housing construction boom.
| Aug 11, 2010
Loft Condo Conversion That's Outside the Box
Few people would have taken a look at a century-old cigar box factory with crumbling masonry and rotted wood beams and envisioned stylish loft condos, but Miles Development Partners did just that. And they made that vision a reality at Box Factory Lofts in historic Ybor City, Fla. Once the largest cigar box plant in the world, the Tampa Box Company produced boxes of many shapes and sizes, spec...
| Aug 11, 2010
World's tallest all-wood residential structure opens in London
At nine stories, the Stadthaus apartment complex in East London is the world’s tallest residential structure constructed entirely in timber and one of the tallest all-wood buildings on the planet. The tower’s structural system consists of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels pieced together to form load-bearing walls and floors. Even the elevator and stair shafts are constructed of prefabricated CLT.
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter Takes Experience Design To New Heights
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
Giants 300 Multifamily Report
Multifamily housing starts dropped to 100,000 in April—the lowest level in several decades—due to still-worsening conditions in the apartment market. Nonetheless, the April total is below trend, so starts will move progressively back to a still-depressed 150,000-unit pace by late next year.
