A lot of architectural schemes start from scratch with the assumption that everything on the building site will be razed or removed, but for this office structure, the designers saved and raised up the robust greenery already occupying the lot.

In Da Nang, Vietnam’s fourth-largest city, Ho Khue Architects saw the resilient native plants as an opportunity to inform their overall approach and reduce their eco-footprint. Pampas grass, bamboo shrubs, banana trees and other types were evaluated for optimal relocation.

Some species were uprooted and replanted indoors, to visually warm concrete spaces and provide fresh air, set in pots and hung from ceilings.

Climbing varieties were offered purchase on the structures exterior, with lattices and other textured surfaces providing opportunities for growing vines.

Other plants were relocated to the rooftop, creating an outdoor garden while also serving as a thermal barrier to cool inside floors below.

Overall, the greenery sets up a nice contrast with concrete surfaces and minimal furnishings and fixtures, and operates in tandem with various passive cooling and ventilation strategies.

Per the architects: “Working in this modern office evokes feelings reminiscent of childhood and a time when life was simpler. The air flow is fresh from the sea leading to comfortable temperature without being cold. Today’s younger generation may have had little or no time in the countryside. This office has brought the spirit and the heart of the rural areas to the workplace.” For more inside-out (or: outside-in) designs, check out this collection of ten offices that have creatively incorporated greenery.

At a glance, the honeycomb structure of terracotta tubes looks more like large-scale work of handmade sculpture than a highly designed air conditioner. Developed for an electronics factory in New Delhi, this evaporative cooling device requires no power to lower interior temperatures by as much as 26 degrees Fahrenheit.

Designed by Ant Studio for DEKI Electronics in New Delhi, the low-tech strategy taps into a long history of passive cooling systems that employ water rather than power. Water passing through the clay pipes and falling into the basin below looks and sounds soothing, but it also lower air temperatures as it evaporates.

The appearance of the system is also deceptively simple. It looks like a roughly hand-crafted sculpture rather than something developed through advanced computational analysis and modern calibration techniques. The effect is astonishing: temperatures of 122 degrees can be brought down as low 96 degrees (perhaps not room temperature comfortable for everyone, but still a remarkable drop).

The tubes are porous, absorbing water that slowly evaporates. Monish Siripurapu, founder of Ant Studio, says this project has “opened up a lot more possibilities … we can integrate this technique with forms that could redefine the way we look at cooling systems, a necessary yet ignored component of a building’s functionality. Every installation could be treated as an art piece,” he believes.

Able to reduce cooling costs by up to 30% and heating expenses by as much as 60%, this series of temperature-regulating furnishings stores thermal energy without requiring an external power source, helping maintain room temperatures both during the day and at night.

Designed by Raphaël Ménard and Jean-Sébastien Lagrange, designs in this series such as the Climactic Table are composed of a combination of solid oak and corrugated aluminum with phase-change materials (PCM) sandwiched in between.

The wood contributes to desired thermal properties while the shaped aluminum provides structural support and conductivity. As a passive heating and cooling strategy, these objects can augment existing systems or replace them entirely in moderate climates.

A familiar phenomena in the realm of architecture, the idea of using materials to store and discharge heat or cold naturally is an old one. Stone, concrete or brick, for instance, are often placed to pick up warmth during the day then mitigate the temperature change at night, releasing that stored heat energy. While there is no specific control mechanism in play, such systems naturally create a level of equilibrium that reduces the next for external active (HVAC) systems.

Proposed just two years ago, this alternative solar-powered passive streetlight system is now already a reality, deployed along motorways across the Netherlands. As one reporter put it after riding along the newly-transformed highways: “It looks like you are driving through a fairytale.”

This is just the beginning of a Smart Highway approach designed to adapt surfaces to the needs of drivers. Constituent ideas include the display of relevant contextual information directly on roadways (including traffic and weather conditions) as well as direct wireless car charging.

Other new ideas from Studio Roosegaarde include the possibility of turning street materials into smog attractors, reducing the spread of pollutants by pulling harmful particulates right out of the air. Despite the compelling design component, their creator describes these innovations as reforms rather than designs – ways of improving everyday life and personal safety.

Rather than turning toward far-flung science-fiction, these designers have extrapolated current engineering techniques and evolving technologies. This skyscraper thus fuses passive power generation, urban agricultural endeavors, modular climate-sensitive skins and mobile plug-and-play platforms.

Architects of the 20th Century learned the hard way that actually predicting the future of built environments is essentially impossible. Arup‘s engineers take a different approach with this concept, playing out a number of both feasible and fantastic ideas all in one inspiring schematic design – more infographic than proposal.

Imagine smart systems and fully-integrated transit reducing the cost and time of urban conveyance and decreasing the distance between production, storage and use of energy, food, water and other essential resources.

A lot of these themes (buildings producing more energy than they consume, for instance) are already playing out individually and in prototype form in current structures, but the ways in which they with synthesize into new structural languages remain to be seen.

The result is not a design proposal as such (though viewed on those terms, it is a thing of wonder), but an experimental illustration of the kinds of things we might find in the future, fused to and integrated with structures yet unbuilt.