A foliage covered future
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Image by Renderings via urban greenery (top image)
When I think of the future of our built environment, I imagine lush vegetation covering our streets and buildings. I see food forests, parks and productive private plots.
The responsibility of planning this verdurous future falls not only on the ideas and ideals of landscape designers working on the ground plane, but will also need to be planned vertically and include architects, engineers and the contemporary concept of “vegitecture.”
Top and above: Envisioned for 2011—the winning city centre design for Gwanggyo, Korea,
by Dutch architects MVRDV—will comprise housing, office, culture, retail, leisure
and education spaces for the estimated 77,000 inhabitants. The efficient Gwanggyo
Power Centre’s small energy and water footprint will also aid in the town’s plan
to be self-sustaining. (Renderings via urban greenery)
The Consorcio Building in Santiago, Chile. (Photo via urban greenery)
An early example if vegitecture: Habitat ’67 by architect
Moshe Safdie, Montreal, 1967. (Photo via archetypes)
Zorlu Ecocity in Turkey by architect Ken Yeang. (Rendering via landscape + urbanism)
Essentially the use of organic materials as an element of construction, vegitecture is the concept of integrating live organic materials into the fabric of the built environment. This provides an attractive alternative to traditional construction materials.
The Highline New York: An elevated park in the sky built on top of
the skeleton of an old railsystem. (Photo via inhabitat.com)
Providing more than aesthetic benefits, vegitecture offers natural insulation, increases urban biodiversity and air quality, improves efficiency and dampens noise. It also provides a more natural urban environment, reducing stress and increasing a sense of well-being. It would appear the success of our future relies on the success of—put simply—plants.
Harvest Green Tower proposal by Romses Architects for the City of
Vancouver’s 2030 challenge. (Rendering via inhabitat.com)
Proposed expansion for the Vancouver Convention Centre.
(Rendering via Christian Barnard Landscape)
Rafael Viñoly's Battersea Power Station. (Photo via World Architecture News)
Patrick Blanc, French botanist and creator of the vertical garden, installed this garden along the elevator shaft of Bangkok’s Emporium Shopping Centre. (Photo via urban greenery)
CPG Consultant’s School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Singapore. (Photo via urban greenery)
For more on vegitecture, visit the blog Veg.itecture.
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