Eco-friendly building opens doors in London

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Electronics giant Siemens is opening the doors of what is claimed to be one of the most advanced environmentally friendly buildings in the world. The glass Crystal, positioned a short distance from London’s Olympic Park, aims to use half the energy of other major exhibition spaces, and produces 65 percent fewer polluting emissions.

You’re looking at two paralellogram crystals merged into one building.

One half is an exhibition space aimed at educating people about the building and about new energy efficient technologies.

The other half is a state-of-the-art conference centre and office space, which seeks to become a global focal point for experts on sustainable urban development.

Siemens urban sustainability centre

This is not the office building of the future. It’s a building which shows how you can incorporate features which make a building energy independent.

Each one of the technologies used to make this gleaming glass structure are not revolutionary in themselves. But brought together under one roof, they make up something unusual.

Hattie Hartman, sustainability editor, architect's journal, said,"The building also has something called energy piles and some of these are up to 150 metres (492 feet) deep and they basically take advantage of the difference in temperature below the earth and inside the building depending on the season."

The Crystal is reliant on the UK’s national grid for electricity. But it is poised to take advantage of smart grid technology, which means that in the future it hopes to become completely independent of fossil fuels.

The exhibition space itself will be tailor-made to respond to the age and understanding of the conference visitors.

Building concept creators Siemens, says each visitor will be given a key which they can use to interact with the installations.

These will trigger different responses, some of which are designed to answer the questions of a twelve year old child and others to clarify points for the architectural professional, or an expert in sustainability issues.

Hattie Hartman said,"Buildings, they can be designed to perform at incredible efficiencies, it’s really all about how it’s actually going to work in practice and one thing Siemens has done is to put all the monitoring for the building inside the exhibition, so you will have live real time monitoring of how the building is performing."

The building is a short distance from London’s Olympic Park, close to the giant Excel Centre and O2 Arena.

The Crystal will open to the public with the start of a waterfront festival this Saturday.

Siemens urban sustainability centre

Siemens urban sustainability centre