Green ArchiTEXT

London’s Vertical Garden

Another very cool piece in Wired – this time on the work of French botanist Patrick Blanc, whose green living wall now graces the façade of London’s The Athenaeum hotel (below). Writer Cliff Kuang describes it as an “eight-story antigravity forest composed of 12,000 plants”. Others are appearing in Frankfurt, Madrid, Kuwait, Portugal, Bangkok, New York and, of course, Paris.

PHOTO: Wired

From "8-Story Antigravity Forest Facade Takes Root":

“Blanc uses a kind of techno-trellis as the underlying structure: A plastic-coated aluminum frame is fastened to the wall and covered with synthetic felt into which plant roots can burrow. A custom irrigation system keeps the felt moist with a fertilizer solution modeled after the rainwater that trickles through forest canopies.

But plants for this vertical landscape must be chosen with care. Because the walls are so high, conditions vary widely. The shade at ground level is perfect for rare Asian nettles; on the brighter upper stories, plants that usually cling to windblown cliff faces brave the blustery British breezes.”

Blanc describes each of his walls as a “Vertical Garden” (Le Mur Végétal), a concept based on his observations of natural environments as a scientist for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) since 1982. The Garden, he says, relies “on a new way to grow plants without any soil.” Read more about his work here.

Janine Benyus Talks Biomimicry

Great new video of Janine Benyus presenting last month and just posted to TED.com. She updates the audience on her Biomimicry Guild’s latest discoveries in “Biomimicry in action”:

• A U.S. cement manufacturing company is using CO2 as a building block in concrete, borrowing the ‘recipe’ from plants and organisms that make shells and coral
• A new kind of solar cell based on how a leaf works is self assembling and can be put down on any substrate
• A new software program used to make bridges lightweight and building beams lightweight, based on the algorithm used by trees and bones are constantly reforming themselves along lines of stress
• Creating a ‘synthetic tree’ – which relies on capillary action and transpiration to pull water up, a drop at a time – as a kind of wallpaper on the insides of buildings to move water up without pumps

How Many Solar Panels Does It Take to Power the World?

That’s essentially the question put forth by the Land Art Generator Initiative and then illustrated in “Total Surface Area Required to Fuel the World With Solar”. The map (pictured here) estimates that 496,805 square kilometers would be needed worldwide by the year 2030 to supply 678 quadrillion Btu, using solar panels alone and producing zero carbon emissions.

Their assumptions:

“According to the US Department of Energy (Energy Information Administration), the world consumption of energy in all of its forms (barrels of petroleum, cubic meters of natural gas, watts of hydro power, etc.) is projected to reach 678 quadrillion Btu (or 7.15 exajoules) by 2030 – a 44% increase over 2008 levels (levels for 1980 were 283 quadrillion Btu and we stand at around 500 quadrillion Btu today).

I wonder what surface area would be required and what type of infrastructural investment would be required to supply that amount of power by using only solar panels. To create fuel that can be used in vehicles and equipment I am assuming that some of the electricity generated would be used to create hydrogen. We should all start wondering about these things since we will have really no other choice by the turn of the next century.”

Interesting concept, based on dividing these arrays among 5,000 super-site installations around the world – equaling a land area roughly the size of Spain. Read more here.

Gerding Theater at the Armory

The Gerding Theater in Portland's Pearl District is LEED Platinum, and one of the greenest historic renovation efforts in North America. Here's a 360-degree view of its amazing lobby/entrance.


Lobby of Gerding Theater at The Armory in Portland

Touring the Trahan Design at Make It Right

Trey Trahan of Trahan Architects describes strengthening the traditional shotgun, using the memory of the site and other sustainable design choices for the Dupar House constructed as part of the Make It Right project in the recovering Lower Ninth Ward.

Trahan architects' Make It Right house design

PHOTOS: Kathy Muse

The Mannahatta Project: Life Before Us

Imagine the City of Manhattan 400 years ago, before the Dutch founded a fur trading settlement on the southern tip of the island known as "Nieuw Amsterdam". Once, this was a rich landscape of forests, fields, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, beaches and streams, supporting a wide variety of flora and fauna and home to the Lenape tribes.

This re-envisioning of Manhattan is the focus of the Mannahatta Project at New York’s Wildlife Conservation Society. It reflects nearly a decade of research led by Eric Sanderson, a senior conservation ecologist for WCS at the Bronx Zoo, after he came across a British Headquarters map from 1782. In turn, he speculated what life might have been like in 1609, before the skyscrapers, subways and crowded sidewalks, when Henry Hudson first gazed upon the region. The results are amazing: computer-generated, interactive images of the island, called “Mannahatta” by the native peoples, as it might have looked then. Sanderson describes the evolution of the project in this video. The Mannahatta exhibition continues at the Museum of the City of New York through October 12. Sanderson, who’s an expert in the application of geographic principles and techniques to problems in wildlife, landscape, and ecological conservation, also published a book on the project, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, last May.

Still, the project’s centerpiece is the online presentation, a place to explore the island block by block from the present back to 1609. I decided to examine the area surrounding the Chrysler Building at 405 Lexington Avenue, bounded by 43rd and 44th Streets between Third Avenue and Lexington. The project site features a detailed reconstruction of the immediate landscape, wildlife and human habitat that likely existed here four centuries ago, contrasted with the dense urban space of today. Incredible.

A Greener ‘City of Light’ 2030

CREDIT: cop. Yves Lion Equipe Groupe Descartes/Habiter les fleuves

Paul Lukez of WorldChanging has written an amazing piece on Le Grand Pari, The Grand Paris Project, convened by President Nicolas Sarkozy to envision the city as a model “Post-Kyoto Metropolis of the 21st Century.” Sarkozy’s commission included 10 architects and their multi-disciplinary teams. Their charge: transform Paris, and particularly its suburbs, through densification of underutilized areas while improving transit connectivity. The results of these proposals are on display as part of the exhibition “Le Grand Pari de L’agglomération Parisienne” until November 2009.

In “Transforming Paris: ‘Le Grand Paris 2030’ as a Post-Kyoto Metropolis”, Lukez writes:

“The discussion of the sprawling metropolis cannot exist without addressing the role of nature and ecology. Inventive strategies for integrating nature into the metropolis were readily evident. The River Seine and its valley can act as a revitalized armature for urban development models that are ecologically sensitive. In other proposals, forests and farms re-inhabit the metropolis, pumping oxygen and recreational opportunities into the metropolitan domain.

The city is no longer a dominant center fed by secondary communities on its fringes. Instead, the metropolis operates as a polycentric/multi-nodal conglomeration. Recognizing this reality requires an infusion of infrastructural, urban, and architectural interventions to strengthen the dispersed metropolitan nodes and the connections between them. The metropolis can evolve into a meaningfully interconnected and layered network of nodes, each intensified with uses and amenities. Infrastructure plays a special role in this strategy.”

Read the full article here.

CREDIT: Finn Geipel + Giulia Andi - Equipe Lin