One of the most anticipated building completions of the last decade, the eco-friendly Agora Garden Tower in Taipei, Taiwan is scheduled for delivery in September of 2017.
Driven by a passion to fight global warming and to create a better future for mankind, Vincent Callebaut of Paris designed the DNA-like structure with many features that will actively the carbon footprint of its occupants, such as a rainwater collection and recycling system, over 10,000 sq feet of solar panels, and more than 23,000 trees on the twisting garden patios.
The building will not only serve as a landmark achievement in environmental consciousness being put into real-life use, it will also most likely play a pivotal role in other city planners, builders and architects recognizing the inherent benefits and allure of such a project, and likely following suit.
This building is proof that you can live in luxury, in a visually stunning and aesthetically pleasing building with all the latest amenities, and still eliminate the majority of your carbon footprint.
Vincent Callebaut has designed many astounding concepts for sustainable building of the future, however it's wonderful to see one of them finally taking shape and nearing a finished product. Many individuals have been skeptical as to just how feasible projects like this can be and whether or not they're actually economically-viable, so this one-of-a kind leap into the relatively new frontier of green-building design will almost be a sort of test-run to see what works and what doesn't. So this should be interesting to say the least.
While the project will only effectively negate roughly the same amount of carbon as approximately 27 cars, it itself is only a small step in the right direction. It's up to us as a society, especially on an individual level, to implement more of these sustainable practices in our own lives to mitigate the effects of climate change and move further in the direction of sustainability.
We can do things like insisting on growing a portion of our own food, especially through water-saving systems such as hydroponics or aquaponics. We can install solar and off-grid backup systems in our homes. We can reduce our plastic and waste by reusing, composting, and making our own products instead of buying pre-manufactured ones that have to be packaged, shipped, and labeled.
And what's more intriguing is all this can be done in communities like the one at the Agora Garden Tower described above. There's no reason why we have to live out in the middle of a forest to be sustainable. We can use the natural resources and combine them with science and technology to get the most out of what we have and make it last as long as we need to.
This is how society really needs to start thinking in order for the world to head in a direction we might actually enjoy in the future, if we're even here to enjoy it...
That's one of the reasons why I like cryptocurrencies so much. They may not be solving all the inherent problems of the monetary system right off the bat, but they're a step in the right direction because they're getting us out from under the rule of the central banking cartel, and the further we can get away from that system the better.
And the more ways we can figure out to do just that, the better.
-Welcome to Society 2.0
Image Credits: Forgemind ArchiMedia, Flickr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/eager/
creative commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode