Kengo Kuma & Associates build new green building in Silicon Valley

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has begun construction on a sustainable-driven green building with a giant "green-lung" atrium at its centre.

The building is being built in San Jose, California, at the heart of Silicon Valley. Called Park Habitat, the 20-storey building will have both retail and office spaces as well as being an “expansion space” for its neighbour Tech Interactive, a science and technology centre. 

Focusing on sustainability and innovative methods of heating and cooling the building, Park Habitat will be an all-electric building design, with on-site solar PVs, and louvres – a regular feature of Kengo Kuma & Associates designs – which will allow for the flow of air. The building will also minimise the consumption of potable water, an important design feature in drought-prone California, and harness waste heat.

Park Habitat will have a glass and wood facade, an atrium with concrete structural beams and semi-enclosed setback gardens. The commercial building is set to be entirely covered in plants – with vertical vegetation, vegetated walls, window box-style planters, plus vines on vertical wire trellises. There will be a landscaped garden on the roof, too.

Read more: How robots could aid UN sustainability goals

"Strong relationships to nature are essential to our quality of life," said Kengo Kuma, founder of Kengo Kuma and Associates. "Park Habitat breathes with an outsized vertical courtyard called the green lung. The green lung brings light deep into each floor and surprises as a vertical garden, pervading the building’s atmospheres.”

The Biophilic building is being designed for “architectural inhalation and exhalation on a 24-hour cycle,” said the studio.

Park Habitat will also use vegetation to regulate temperatures, improve indoor air quality and provide conditions that are as close as possible to outdoor fresh air quality.

Park Habitat is part of a six-building 120,000 square metre (1.3 million sq ft) Net Zero Campus project being conducted by real-estate development company Westbank in partnership with urban community, Peterson and OPtrust. The buildings are all focused on sustainability and are community-focused.

“The team presents its newly designed Westbank campus as a response to the structure of the city, and how it is failing its occupants and its natural context — finally bringing Silicon Valley’s built space into the future with a community-focused collection of residences and workspaces,” said Westbank.

“I do not want to work inside when I can work outside,” said Westbank founder Ian Gillespie.

"To reduce embodied and operational carbon to the greatest extent possible, the project will leverage low-carbon building materials, and connect to an all-electric district energy system developed by Creative Energy," Westbank said of Park Habitat.

Read more: Elon Musk & Google boost carbon removal with investments

Other parts of the extensive Westbank project include the restoration of the Bank of Italy by Bjarke Ingels Group, the Orchard Residences by James K.M. Cheng Architects, The Orchard Workspace by WRNS studio and Arbor by Studio Gang.

Kengo Kuma & Associates, which was established by architect Kengo Kuma in 1990, is known for projects that look at the association between nature, technology, and human beings. Past buildings include V&A Dundee and Japan National Stadium in Tokyo and the studio will be building a holiday home for Kim Kardashian.

Back to Homepage

Back to Construction & Engineering