Sacramento, California Sim Van der Ryn, State Architect The Gregory Bateson Building was the flagship building of a series of state office projects. These buildings were intended to transform the State of California’s building administration practices. The aim was to move state agen­cies from scattered leased office spaces to more amenable workplaces the state would […]

A final principle of the environmental ethic concerns lim­its on the boundaries of influence that a design is obligat­ed to consider. Here too there are shades of green determined by the extent of scale. The spectrum crosses between what Norwegian ecophilosopher Arne Naess terms “shallow ecology” and “deep ecology,” designating respective degrees of local versus […]

D escribed as solar, passive, ecological, sustainable, regenerative, or just plain green—environmentally aligned approaches to architecture are guided by both scientific principles and a worshipful romance with nature. Consequently, green buildings are part method, part philosophy, and part ethic. Ethic The 2000-2001 traveling exhibit Ten Shades of Green, curated by Peter Buchanan and designed by […]

Precedent The most fundamental roots for Foster’s design of the HSBC building are found in his own solution for the Willis Faber Dumas (WFD) headquarters of 1975 (see case study #7). Completed four years before the Hong Kong competition began, the WFD building portrays many of the ideas consistent and evolving in Foster’s work. The […]

Hong Kong Norman Foster & Associates The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HKSB) is a vertical banking city of eight villages suspended below double­height lobby spaces. The lowest of the lobbies is an open pedestrian mall at grade level that maintains an urban parkway leading from ferry landings to cultural centers. Inside the building a […]