10 DESIGN BEYOND NEUTRALITY

The very term 'sustainable design' implies an aspiration to retain the status quo. What, however, if buildings could have a more proactive effect? Air quality is generally regarded as an environmental problem that has to be tackled by municipal agencies at the urban scale, which architectural design can have little or no impact on. Here Ted Givens of 10 Design, a newly established practice in Hong Kong, describes the Indigo Tower, a project undertaken with researchers at Hong Kong University, which explores the way that a building can enhance the wider air quality of its environment through bio-purification. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.