Construction accounts for more than a third of global emissions, making sustainable architecture central to the world meeting its climate targets, The Guardian reported.
Five architectural creations from around the world exemplify how green buildings can also be beautiful, proving that resource efficiency does not compromise aesthetic ambition.
In Tocantins, central Brazil, the Canuanã school serves 540 boarders from remote farming communities across the region. In 2017, architects gave the school two new villages of dormitories, separating spaces for girls and boys.
The buildings utilize locally sourced timber and earth bricks beneath a vast canopy that shades the complex. Perforated brick walls let air pass through, keeping bedrooms comfortable without air conditioning even when temperatures reach 45C.
“It is absolutely fantastic. So beautiful. It does a lot with little resource, which is the essence of a sustainable approach,” said David Mikhail, the co-founder of Mikhail Riches, a UK practice specialising in sustainable design, told The Guardian. He added: “I love the economy of it, and the huge sense of place they managed to evoke through such elegant and limited means.”
The architects faced the primary challenge of convincing pupils and teachers that earth, brick and timber could feel modern rather than old-fashioned. They overcame this hurdle by listening to students through 10 days of workshops to understand what they wanted from the design.
Half a world away in Bali, Indonesia, the Green school is surrounded by jungle and promotes sustainability through learning in a natural environment. Since opening in 2008, the campus has been built almost entirely in bamboo, culminating in the completion of its gymnasium, the Arc, in 2021.
Sweeping bamboo arches support an undulating canopy across a 760-sq-metre sports court without a single column interrupting the floor space. Inspired by a mammal’s ribcage, the structure achieves natural ventilation as breezes flow in at the base while warm air escapes through top vents.
Bamboo serves as a highly sustainable building material because of its rapid regeneration, with large varieties reaching building strength in just three to six years. “It is so fast-growing and sequesters a lot of carbon dioxide very quickly, so using it for building is a bit of a no-brainer if you can make it work,” David Mikhail, the co-founder of Mikhail Riches, told The Guardian.
Further north, Skellefteå in Sweden stands just south of the Arctic Circle, surrounded by 480,000 hectares of forest. The small city features wooden schools, a wooden road bridge, and a wooden multistorey car park.
In 2021, the city added Sara Kulturhus, a 20-storey cultural centre and hotel housing two theatres, a museum, an art gallery, the city library, and a hotel. The structure ranks among the tallest timber buildings in the world, constructed using glulam and cross-laminated timber.
Prefabricated wooden pods arrived as hotel rooms and were stacked directly into place during construction. Building in wood saved a year in construction time compared with steel and concrete, utilizing timber harvested within 40 miles of the site where replacement trees have since been planted.
“It promotes a love affair with wood and timber, and the localism of that in an area like Sweden is fabulous,” Mikhail told The Guardian. He added that the cross-laminated timber panels do not require elderly specimen trees, relying instead on relatively fast-grown and sustainably farmed timber.
When the University of Tasmania planned the redevelopment of its central Hobart campus in Australia, architects chose adaptation over demolition. Two early 20th-century brick warehouses and a heritage-listed glass dome were stitched together into a single campus of classrooms and study spaces that opened in February 2026.
Built in 1997, the central glass dome contains about 3,200 native plants, including various species of ferns, maintained by an integrated watering, misting, and fogging system that recreates rainforest-like growing conditions.
“You could argue the most sustainable building is actually no building, and the second most sustainable building is a refurbished old building,” Mikhail told The Guardian.
In the Wiltshire countryside in the UK, a house on the site of a former brickworks was built from the ground beneath it using rammed earth, a technique utilized since the Neolithic period. Clay-rich soil was dug up and mixed with rubble from demolished outbuildings and local limestone, then compacted layer by layer into thick walls.
The earth remains unstabilised with no added cement, making it one of only a few UK buildings constructed that way. This method allows the material to return directly to the ground if the house is ever demolished.
Rammed earth’s thermal mass evens out indoor temperature and moisture, a design feature architects emphasize will matter more as the climate warms.
“As a piece of architecture, I think it’s phenomenal. It’s an architect’s dream, and I’m slightly envious of it, I’ll be honest. It’s like a beautiful piece of jewellery, and it riffs on lots of really lovely sustainable ideas.”
