The Green Building is a naturally cool place. It dispenses with the twin curses of modern offices - all-day artificial lighting and year-round air-conditioning - and instead uses the sun and smart design to stay cool and bright. The building's designers, Future Systems Architects and Ove Arup & Partners, know that it will never be built. But they hope that the ideas in the structure will influence a new generation of design. As hot stale air exhausts through the louvres at the top of the building, cold air is sucked in through vents at the base of the atrium. In summer, this "stack" effect is enhanced by the sun heating air trapped between the inner and outer glass skins of the building. The moveable slatted blinds protect occupants from bright sunshine while still allowing plenty of natural light to enter the building.
In winter, the building's design allows heat to be recovered from air flowing out of the structure's top and then used to pre-heat cold air from outside as it enters the building. Sounds ambitious, but the design proved perfectly viable when tested in thermodynamic computer models.
The designers sum up the motivation behind the project succinctly. "We have become lazy. We have forgotten how to change our clothes to suit the weather." This building is a lazy way of letting us be lazy; it simply soaks up the sun and relaxes.