Combo Green Roof/Wall

:: image via Streamline Enterprises

Via Chris Bruntlett: "Our company, Streamline Enterprises (www.agreenroof.ca), recently installed a very exciting and high-profile project at the foot of the new Canada Line in Vancouver. A joint venture between Gossamer Threads, TBWA\Vancouver, and Deecorp Properties, the rooftop patio includes both a Green Roof and Living Wall. To be utilized by employees for lunches, barbeques, and social gatherings, this space creates an incredibly lush retreat in the heart of Downtown Vancouver. It was designed, engineered, managed, and installed by Streamline Enterprises, with some assistance from our network of certified installers and technicians."

More images below:










:: image via Streamline Enterprises

Healing Veg.itecture

A couple of emails received today link the ideas of veg.itecture with healing or therapeutic spaces. Check out Naomi Sach's great 'Therapeutic Landscapes Network Blog' that recently explores the idea of green/living walls and their role in healing environments. The post offered some favorites, including the work of the well-publicied Patrick Blanc, as well as some healing-specific spaces, such as this small wall at a continuing care retirement community in Hyde Park, Chicago by Hitchcock Design Group. Very cool idea, and these smaller walls are great to provide views from rooms with little available landscape, or on patios to provide microclimate and biophilic benefits - while being efficient in size and possible to implement in multiple locations. Strategic living walls, if you will.


:: image via TLNB - photo Naomi Sachs

Second, another recent email showed a YouTube video of Gardens that Heal, exploring "...the healing atriums at Henry Ford Hospital West Bloomfield. Gerard Van Grinsven on the therapeutic benefits of plants and designed interior landscapes." installed by Planterra, the landscape offers many benefits, and also dispells some of the myths regarding plants being irreconcilable with medical environments.



Finally, check out the december issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine (coming out in a few weeks, where my book review of Esther Sternberg's great book 'Healing Spaces' (first published on L+U) will be included towards the end of the book.

Tempe Transit Center

With all of the talk of integrally planted green walls, it's often forgotten that there is a range of possible vertical solutions that also include trellises and climbing plants. One recent project that utilizes this in a tough climate is the Tempe Transit Center, which incorporates the gold standard of modular trellis systems, GreenScreen on buildings and shelters to provide cooling for building users and people waiting for transit options in the hot sun.


:: image via larson o'brien

The use on the building is quite interesting, and definitely fits into the idea of bioclimatic architecture by shading a significant portion of the building facade. The possibility of seasonal variation is a combination of evergreen and deciduous plantings that provide maximum shading in the summer and somewhat filtered light access in the winter. This can be adjusted regionally depending on different climate and micro-climatic conditions.

I'm really intrigued by the implementation on the shelters, as seen in the photo below. A small sliver of planting area to allow for plants to 'touch down' doesn't impede on the pedestrian environment, and the panels become both functional and beautiful.


:: images via larson o'brien

There is also a more direct improvement of microclimate at a pedestrian user scale, as the impacts aren't as dissipated through the building skin and rooms, but is more immediately felt on the ground. These still don't seem terribly dense either, due to their newness, or perhaps by design in some areas to ensure safety and security.


:: images via larson o'brien

The graphic below shows some data on the cooling pocket that is created through the roof and vegetation, through shading and evapotranspiration to cool surrounding air. This shows a noticable difference between the fully exposed areas near pavement (146 degrees F) to the inner areas of planted shade (96 degrees F) - which although hot, probably feels like heaven in comparison to the alternative.


:: image via larson o'brien

The striving for the veg.itectural uses all of the available tools, not merely the ones garnering the most attention at this point. The model of using the data collection on this building (hopefully with a much broader focus and rigor) provides actual data and a plausible impact (hear this PNC green wall) about the cooling benefits, not just anecdotes.

Mark Rothko Apartments

It's unique to find a local project with some veg.itectural flair, so an addition to that is the interesting work, the unbuilt, possibly to be named, Mark Rothko Apartments, by one of the more innovative firms in town, works partnership architecture. along with one of the most daring developers, Randy Rapaport. The project features a stretching of the central core to create a 'garden' level that incorporates public space and a dynamic layer slicing through the facade.


:: image via Portland Architecture

Some info from the WPA site: "The influx of people moving into the region results in a lack of housing for Portland’s workforce. The push for density in our cities is necessary for reducing sprawl and the related global impacts. Through an adaptation of the courtyard typology - using the small site to force an evolution - and the act of creating an iconic meter for analyzing the variations and controls of creating neighborhoods mixes, this project creates a new prototype. It pulls inspiration from the modern iconic high-rises and allows the rigidness to deform with the will of its inhabitants."

:: image via WPA

Brian Libby from Portland Architecture just posted a lengthy interview with WPA principals Bill Neburka and Carrie Schilling about the genesis of this building, which is a great read. The building is explained as being "...actually designed like two buildings, with one half cantilevered over the other. In between, on what is called the transfer floor, is a greenspace and community room."


:: image via Portland Architecture

This transfer floor offers the vegitectural insertion which is often impossible in tight urban development, where the roof and the streetscape, with an occasional balcony, and the only places to provide some usable space, as well as incorporating lively vegetated facade greening. The developer and architects were excited by the idea of this transfer floor, which has been done elsewhere, to become open space, which connects the upper and lower vertical 'neighborhoods' within the building. Can't wait to see this one move forward.


:: image via Portland Architecture

Another interesting project from the firm, that won an 2008 AIA Design award as well is called grow.pdx. From the wpa site: "grow is comprised of nineteen 850 to 1,100sf units: two-bedroom/one-bath and three-bedroom/two-bath loft style courtyard houses. Each home is a building block that creates a pattern of voids around its own private exterior courtyard garden. This arrangement creates a gradation of outdoor space that reinforces interaction. grow.pdx is conceived of as a starter home development that updates past and current notions of home ownership: traditional suburban backyard neighborhoods, modern urban living, and sustainable communities."


:: images via wpa

I like the concept, but really love the interesting graphics that the firm prepared to show this 'treehouse' like conceptual idea, connecting indoors and outdoors and blurring the line between architecture and landscape.


:: images via wpa

Vegitecture in Action (VIA 1)

I've finally emerged from the fall slumber of business, and realized that my hording of vegitecture projects has led to an archive of projects that are literally bursting at the seams. With over 100+ projects in the queue from both Vegitecture in Action (VIA) and Vegitecture in Visual Assessment (VIVA) (explained here in a previous 'Roots' post here) I'm planning on dropping some major project overload on the readers - so definitely be forewarned, then be amazed.

Meydan Retail Complex
Istanbul, Turkey


:: image via Urban Greenery

City Hall Green Roof
Seattle, Washington


:: image via hugeasscity

Paço De Pombeiro
Felgueiras, Portugal.


:: image via Inhabitat

The Dune House
Torrão do Lameiro, Portugal


:: image via Archidose

Campus Cap Gemini
Utrecht, Holland


:: image via Platforma Arquitectona

Lamson-West Residence
Ohio


:: image via Urban Greenery

Emerging Landscapes
Karpenisi, Greece


:: image via Arch Daily

Villa Nord
Aseri Estonia


:: image via ArchDaily

Flon Metro Station
Lausanne, France


:: image via Urbanarbolismo

Kö-Bogen
Düsseldorf, Germany


:: image via Urban Greenery

BTEK - Technology Interpretation Centre
Derio, Bizkaia, Spain


:: image via Space Invading

23 Carrer del Taulat

Brian Phelps from the great landscape & building environment photo resource sitephocus sent a very veg.itectural building from Barcelona. He mentioned he only knew the address, so anyone out there with some additional info on this project such as name, designer, or other details, feel free to drop a comment and I will pass it along.




:: images via sitephocus

This is definitely a simple way of offering both personal greenery, as well as an overall modification to the building form by repetition on each level, and a combination of the shorter vegetation and trailing plants.


:: image via sitephocus

Against Vertical Farming

A good set of arguments against the validity of Vertical Farming... worth a read. First via ecogeek.org is 'Let's Make This Clear: Vertical Farms Don't Make Sense', where authors Philip Proefrock and Hank Green make a good case against urban vertical farms: "The inside of a skyscraper is, literally, the most expensive "land" in the world. So it probably isn't the best place to grow our food... A farmer can expect his land to be worth roughly $1 per square foot...if it's good, fertile land. The owner of a skyscraper, on the other hand, can expect to pay more than 200 times that per square foot of his building. And that's just the cost of construction. Factor in the costs of electricity to pump water throughout the thing and keep the plants bathed in artificial sunlight all day, and you've got an inefficient mess."


:: image via ecogeek

Also mentioned is a link to Tobias Buckell's post 'Why vertical farms carry still too steep a price', which offers a similar cost argument, ending with the conclusion that it may be the delivery system, not the growing system that needs fixing. Interesting take: "Far more likely farming continues where it has, but slower alternate delivery methods happen. Like large blimps or sail powered refrigerated trains or sail powered cargo ships moving produce at a slower speed from the point they’re grown to a city."

I'm really glad that a number of people are questioning the validity of the idea - not because I am against it, but because I think that the pie-in-the-sky fantasy of it has overtaken our good common sense when it comes to thinking about urban farming in general. Perhaps in certain cases these will be necessary enough to justify the cost, but a panacea they will never be. More, more, more....! [Thanks Bill Badrick for the link]