A public library and community space in Colombia. This is such a great example of really intelligent design in a really unique and challenging area. Its this type of approach to green/sustainable engineering, and cultural education that needs to dominate future building:
Some excerpts from Arch Daily's post:

If sustainable buildings can be understood as the resourceful result from the use of local materials, local workforce, economical restrictions, climatic particularities and a projected low maintenance, the Public Library for the tropical city of Villanueva in Colombia can be understood as such...it’s a building consisting of two different compact volumes, one houses the public library in the second floor and the complementary program in the first floor (theatre, kids library, administration offices, work spaces, bathrooms), and the other volume shelters a public corridor-plaza...Each of these volumes is built in separate techniques and materials, one in stone gabions (taken under permission from a nearby river) and the other one in pine wood (taken from an ecologically controlled planted forest). In the middle, five metallic white lattice boxes group the program, allowing the air to run though and also creating an open atmosphere where you can see both the wood and the stone. The final outside image renders a monumental project given its scale in the context, but a the same time a down-to-earth sort-of craftsmanship result, an hommage to local made-by-hand objects for the daily life , in short, a minimal tropicallized modern building built for/out of the site.



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