ARCHITECTURE: The ecological design will influence the future urban layout

The modern urban buildings waste precious construction materials and pollute. Thus, according to the estimates of architects, in the future there should be built new buildings, with designs that have minimal effects on the environment, given that the cities around the world will change dramatically. According to the studies made by specialists, the urban areas account for 40% of the total carbon emissions in the atmosphere, a percentage that needs to be reduced considerably until 2050, according to European regulations in the field. The architects will play a key role in the evolution of cities both in the situation in which the thermal insulation of the existing buildings will be chosen or the construction of efficient new projects. Thus, a visionary thinking will be required in order to create sustainable design types with minimal effects on the environment on the long term, but also to improve the current industrial process. In this context, the architects take into account more environmentally friendly urban designs, especially in what concerns the manner in which resources are used. However, the new materials are mostly fluid and can meet the changing urban standards. For instance, in Paris, a company owning dwellings uses the heat of the capital's subway network in order to warm the buildings. In the vision of the designers in what concerns an organic architecture in the next 40 years, the cities will question the permanence of construction materials. Architect Neil Spiller, founder of AVATAR group (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) - that examines the ways in which technologies, that find themselves in a continuous process of change, will affect the architecture - believes that "these new opportunities could lead to the creation of new building materials, in particular through the use of emerging biotechnologies and could encourage the diversification of the types of architecture that we produce." In the opinion of Neil Spiller, an example of innovation is constituted by proto-cells with chemical properties that mimic natural processes, and which are used by the team of Professor Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow in order to be developed in paint.