As a member of TED community, I am constantly inspired by the ideas and concepts from all the individual TEDTalks, themes and TED Blog posts. It’s got great resources, excellent ideas from different perspectives from global key opinion leaders.

Recently I’ve been watching some of the Architectural Inspiration videos and as a result I found new respect in the creative process that goes into architecture. Especially Cameron Sinclair’s Talk on Open-source architecture to house the world.

I immediately thought of a television episode that I watched awhile back on the San Francisco Federal “green” building by Thom Mayne. The building was created with many energy saving features in mind and encourage wellness for the occupants working in the building.

For example, the cafe was placed outside of the main building to encourage employees to walk outside the building to stop by for food and the elevators are designed to have stops on every third floor so there will always be some walking require at some point. The buildings is positioned perfectly with massive windows allowing optimal usage of sunlight into the building to reduce electricity usage to light the offices during daytime. In addition, the top 13 floors of the Federal Building do not have air conditioning since the building automatically opens the ventilation windows each evening and admit cooler outside air into the building. Heat energy stored in the building’s exposed concrete structure is removed by the cooler night air.

There are more energy saving technologies that goes into the entire project and as a result it appears to be very sustainable and eco friendly.

The idea is that the future of architecture must incorporate  sustainability in addition to all the fundamental of design as well as “responsibility” to deliver impact solution to address social issues.  Design should improve, perform, and solve problems.