Green Building of the week from Inhabitat is this design from Taiwan - BIG Unveils Gigantic Cube Building with a Rooftop Park.

We've admired some oddly-shaped buildings in our day, but there is something about this simple cube building by BIG Architects that is refreshing and elegant. Called TED, the 57m x 57m x 57m building resembles a gigantic sugar cube, and is meant to serve as a mixed use area for Taiwan. But there's more to the seemingly straightforward structure than meets the eye - a series of strategic hollows that have been tunneled out of the block add interest to the space and a green park that spans the entire rooftop will surely be a new favorite hangout spot for locals.

The main cutout in TED’s facade acts almost as a street, allowing visitors to walk right through the building. To make the smartest use of the space, the large tunnel coils upwards in an ascending spiral that leads from the ground floor all the way up to the verdant roof garden. The rooftop park will serve as a performance area, and restaurants on the penthouse level will open up onto the space, making it an ideal place to meet.

The building will house hotels, shops, showrooms, galleries, offices, and restaurants, welcoming in a mixed group of visitors. Composed of concrete lamellas that provide solar shading, the structure only appears to be a solid block from afar – the spaces between the ribs actually allow for ventilation and increased airflow.

The Age has an interesting article on house prices and population growth - Taiwanese solution to soaring house prices: don't have kids.

In Taipei the other day, a crane drove up to the front of the Parliament building. It lowered a man sitting in a plastic container shaped like a house, and suspended him in the air in a protest against the high price of real estate. Through a microphone, he urged onlookers to rise up against high housing prices, declaring: ''People without homes, slaves to property, stand up!'' ...

This matters because housing is not just an asset like shares or bonds. It is where we live. It's natural for investors to prefer the security of bricks and mortar. But as governments throughout the region are discovering, it is also natural for people to want to own a home - and to turn against governments that allow prices to soar out of their reach. In Taiwan, the costs have become particularly serious, as we shall see. Their would-be home buyers - ''snails without shells'' as they call themselves - have reacted by scrapping the other big expense facing young couples: children.

At home, the Rudd government last week reversed its 2008 liberalisation of foreign investment rules on real estate, and set up a unit to ensure the rules are obeyed. It also set up a joint working party with the states to ask why housing prices have soared out of reach. But that will work only if it tackles the single biggest cause: the tax-driven growth of rental investors, whose borrowing has grown 30-fold in 20 years, squeezing out home owners. ...

Taiwan has become rich very fast, largely by inching its way into a central role in global IT and communications manufacturing. This year, the International Monetary Fund estimates, its GDP per head will overtake that of its one-time colonial master, Japan. Its economy is almost as big as Australia's, and growing twice as fast. Yet its new wealth shows only fleetingly amid the grimy, cramped apartments built in earlier, poorer times.

Taiwan is in the grip of a housing crisis worse than ours. It is a rich country, but wages and most prices are roughly half the levels here - because the government, like China's, holds down the exchange rate to keep its manufacturing globally competitive. ...

Why can't they build more apartments? Because ownership of those grimy old apartment blocks is fragmented among dozens of occupants and investors. To demolish, even to upgrade, a developer must buy them all out, which is prohibitively expensive in time and money. There are classy new apartments on the urban fringe, on greenfields sites, but too few to meet the demand from occupiers and investors. So prices have soared.

So the snails save hard to buy a shell, and do without other things. That means, above all, they do without children, or with just one child. By 2008, Taiwan's fertility rate was the lowest in the world. Its women bear on average just 1.05 children over their lifetimes. The cost of housing is not the only reason, but analysts say it is the main one.

But not having children creates even bigger costs ahead. Right now, Taiwan has 6.8 people of working age for every retiree. But preschools are already closing for lack of children, and the population is set to shrink dramatically. By 2032, demographers project, Taiwan will have just 2.5 potential workers for every retiree - and by 2056, just 1.4. If nothing changes, Taiwan - like China, Japan and Korea - will slowly become economically unviable.

So far, that hasn't happened here. But if governments keep subsidising investors to outbid first home buyers and low income earners, it will. Snails want shells. Taiwan - and soon, possibly China - are showing us what else can go wrong when the price of shells soars out of the snails' reach.

Green building of the week is from TreeHugger, looking at a solar powered Taiwanese convention centre - Taiwanese Center Has High-Tech Solar-Powered Skin.

Taiwan's new Taichung Convention Center will be covered in solar-powered skin that naturally ventilates the structure reducing energy consumption.

The skin--a pleated smocking-esque envelope--provides a natural air flow to the building minimizing air conditioning usage. It also uses a high-tech double photovoltaic glass to reduce the remaining energy consumption. Part of the pleat is also transparent so that natural light can permeate the interior.

Green building of the week from Inhabitat is this Taiwanese soccer stadium - Taiwan’s Solar Stadium is 100% Powered by the Sun. Check the link for some great photos. They've also got a post on an interesting office development in Spain - Madrid’s ‘Distrito C’ Self Shading Solar Office.

Taiwan recently finished construction on an incredible solar-powered stadium that will generate 100% of its electricity from photovoltaic technology! Designed by Toyo Ito, the dragon-shaped 50,000 seat arena is clad in 8,844 solar panels that illuminate the track and field with 3,300 lux. The project will officially open later this year to welcome the 2009 World Games.

Building a new stadium is always a massive undertaking that requires millions of dollars, substantial physical labor, and a vast amount of electricity to keep it operating. Toyo Ito’s design negates this energy drain with a stunning 14,155 sq meter solar roof that is able to provide enough energy to power the stadium’s 3,300 lights and two jumbo vision screens. To illustrate the incredible power of this system, officials ran a test this January and found that it took just six minutes to power up the stadium’s entire lighting system!

The stadium also integrates additional green features such as permeable paving and the extensive use of reusable, domestically made materials. Built upon a clear area of approximately 19 hectares, nearly 7 hectares has been reserved for the development of integrated public green spaces, bike paths, sports parks, and an ecological pond. Additionally, all of the plants occupying the area before construction were transplanted

The Age reports on some risky outdoor adventure activity in Taiwan - going to the beach - Swimmers dive in to nuclear reactor cooling water. Apparently no three-eyed fish have been found nearby (thus far) and the plant owners are keen to encourage the activity - its perfectly safe (not to mention too cheap to meter) !

As Taiwan heats up, swimmers seek relief in the sea ... many at a beach next to a nuclear power plant that spews cooling water straight into the ocean. They try not to think about it.

"I haven't evaluated the safety here. That's something scholars and experts should research more," said fire department employee Hsieh Rong-chan, 36, as he suited up for diving, adding that the water at least looked clean.

State-run Taiwan Power Co's 340-hectare No. 3 Nuclear Power Station opened in 1985 beside a stretch of sand famous among visitors to Kenting, a cluster of beach communities that draw thousands of beach-goers. Taiwan's two other nuclear power plants do not border swimming beaches.

The brown domes of two nuclear plant towers loom in clear view of sunbathers on the white sands, while snorkelers paddle in a coral-rich inlet right next to the open, cement-sided cooling water outtake channel.

"Taiwan people think that if you can't see the danger, then danger basically doesn't exist," said You Hui-chin, 37, as she dipped her toes in a tidal pool a few dozen metres from the cooling water outlet, and watched her twin 4-year-old sons barge further into the ocean.

Some swimmers at Nanwan believe that as long as they only swim next to the nuclear plant occasionally, rather than every day, they will survive. Others are surprised to find the nuclear plant and refuse to touch the water. ...

Kenting locals report no illness or mutated fish.

The power company acknowledges coral blanching from the outtake water, which is 31 to 32 degrees Celsius, higher than normal ocean temperatures. They will spend a one-off $70,000 to protect the surrounding coral reefs.