Prinzessinnengarten

Urban agriculture can mean a lot for a city population. Not only can it provide local food, but it can also create a social landscape in a city.

And Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin does exactly that. Since 2009, a collective called "Nomadic Green" rents a 6000 sqm plot at the Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg. The site has been a wasteland for about 50 years, but with relatively small means it has been transformed in an idyllic urban garden. Not only do locals maintain the garden themselves - thus creating a stronger sense of community in a relatively socially weak area of the city - but it also produces local (healthy and organic) food. Even more so: at Prinzessinnengarten, they strive towards a larger biodiversity. They try to cultivate rare species of plants.



Since the site is only rented, it cannot be a permanent garden. So most of the vegetables are planted in old crates from bakeries, or in large bags. In case the rent is ended (for whatever reason), most of the Prinzessinnengarten could be easily transported to another site. Other than that, by doing so, one doesn't depend on the local soil, since it might not be in the best condition after being wasteland for such a long period of time.



But besides the plants, the food and the greens, the community aspect of the project is quite important. It gives the locals a place to work on food production together, it is a place to educate kids about food, a place to eat together, a place to hang out in a green spot amidst all the concrete and a place that ties extremely different people together. And the idea seems so simple (albeit difficult to actually do, I assume).

Prinzessinnengarten is launched as a pilot project by Nomadic Green, so let's hope that there are many more projects to follow. By them, but also by people that are inspired by their acts.

Arbores Laetae

For the Liverpool Biennale, the architects of Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed a spectacular installation called "Arbores Laetae", or "Joyful Trees". It's made up of a grid of trees, of which some are fitted on an electrical plate, and rotate slowly around spectators. There's something quite disturbing (and quite thrilling, too) about the trees that move. It's like a cross-over from a thriller-movie (it could be Hitchcockian?), that's also addressing the commonplace division between artificial and natural.

The view from a mountain top

Yeah, I know, it's been a while since the previous post. I can come up with a whole bunch of excuses, but I won't. It will sound lame anyway. The most important thing is: here's a new post.

It might seem pretty easy to make a beautiful piece of architecture in amazing surroundings. The location might already be so fabulous that one might suppose there's nothing much to it to make something stunning. Well, the truth is: it's not like that. It's actually much harder to make something really good, simply because you are adding to a site that was good before you did your thing there. You need to measure up to the site, but still be respectable to the amazing qualities of it.

Therefore, a mountain-viewing platform in the Alps is pretty much a difficult task for any architect. It's not a complex program or anything, and structurally it might prove to have some challenges, but the real difficulty is in the fact that any not quite fitting piece of architecture might appear to be competing against the site itself.


And that is one of the reasons that I enjoy this viewing platform in the Tyrolian Alps (in Austria) so much. The designers, astearchitecture, found a way to add to the landscape. The structure holds middle ground between a piece of landscape and construction. Its platform cantilevers about 9 metres off a ridge of the Stubai Glacier, at about 3200m height.
The structure adds a subtle new dimension to the scenery, but it is not screaming too loudly about it's presence. The platform fits subtly into the surroundings, and adds an extra experience to it. I think this is a great job in synthesising landscape and construction


I found this gem on dezeen.com.

A modern primitive cave

As part of his graduation project from Escuela de Arquitectura Universidad de Talca, Rodrigo Sheward actually realized his final project called "conversion of a devastated territory" for a mountain-site in Chile. And it's just lovely. It blends in with the surroundings, it has the right amound of ruggedness that such a site needs, and it gives a nice way to enjoy the beautiful vistas and the surrounding. Oh, and the material ages brilliantly. It is exactly the kind of structure the site needs, and everything is just completely right on this one. Lovely small structure. Many architects would have probably done too much with the site, but in this case the architecture is modest to allow for the site to be the main focus point. Lovely hut for hikers, like the modern equivalent of a cave in the rocks.

For more information (and images) about this project, check out the weblog by Rodrigo Sheward.

The floating school of Halong Bay

It's likely that almost every single tourist visiting Vietnam spends some time in Halong Bay. The caves in the area are pretty much the main attraction of the area: the caves run between the rocky islands: this long stretched piece of coastline is home to approximately 2000 islands. Most of which are too rough to be inhabited. Around these islands, some floating villages can be found. It all seems rather idyllic: about an hour away from main land, a bunch of fishermen live in a more or less normal community-life: they trade their fish for other kinds of food, have families - of which some members have probably never set foot on the main land. The question is: what happens with the kids? Well, there's a floating school in Halong Bay. It's amazing to see how a normal community life can take place in an un-normal situation...

Those images are from a blog called "Mulloskeys adventures abroad".

Green Blade - Jean Nouvel

Green is big business these days. I reckon that there will be a rapport to be found somewhere that states that the sheer mentioning of terms, such as "sustainable", or "green" or "ecological" will raise sales by X% or something.

Therefore, it does make sense that everybody tries to take a piece of the pie - and label their object of desire "green". Like, in this case, a tower of luxurious appartments of 45 levels height. This building was recently unveiled by Jean Nouvel for a site in Los Angeles. And honestly, the building is looking rather slick: it's only about 12 metres wide, allowing for all the appartments to have windows on both north and south facades. This calls for the "blade" in the name of the building.
But what about the "green" part of the Green Blade? Well, every single house gets two green extended platforms with vegetation on it on both north and southside. To go with the typical Californian division, Nouvel provides for desert vegetation on the south, and lushious greenery on the north. This could either be done by a soil-less system by Patrick Blanc, or a more traditional soil system.

Honestly, it looks pretty awesome as a building. Sure, the appartments will be extremely pricy, but that's beside the point.
The real issue is whether placing some plants on a balcony (to take things to an extreme) suffices for a building to be "green". Let me be a narrow-minded eco-warrior for a second: I think it doesn't. Green isn't only about the look, but is also about water-systems, the energy balance of the building, the materials involved and a whole lot more. I don't know the ins and outs of this design, so I should probably give this project the benefit of the doubt and assume that Nouvel is going to make it as sustainable as humanly possible, but chances are that the greenness of this building is just a cheap trick to please the eco-consciousness of the yuppies that'll live in the Green Blade...

I found this project on The Architect's Newspaper.

Urban agriculture

Agriculture in an urban setting: that pretty much sounds like a contradictio in terminis if there ever was one. But lately, urban agriculture is increasing in popularity. There are several reasons why urban agriculture is an interesting concept - depending what the goal is. For instance, food awareness and ecological education. Many children living in contemporary cities have no clue where food comes from. Or how nature functions, generally. By integrating agricultural practices in their day-to-day environment, they can get a better understanding of ecosystems and increase their awareness for food production.

Also, urban agriculture can be a way to become (semi) self-servicing. If you can grow your own crops, you don't have to depend on external parties for supply. And you know what you get - in terms of pesticides, for instance. . There are examples of restaurants already functioning like this (restaurant "De Kas" in Amsterdam, for instance, gorws its own herbs and vegetables. The ingredients are therefore fresh, seasonal, and don't cost tons of petrol to be transported), but the concept also functions in housing groups and other social collectives.

But moreover, urban agriculture can have practical, eco-friendly consequences: most consumers live in cities. To get fresh goods from farmlands into the cities is quite an endeavor. So by actually placing food-production near the food-consumption, supply lines can be effectively shortened.

The thing is: there is a reason why agriculture is traditionally not embedded in cities: density. There simply isn't all that much space available for agriculture. So for integrating agriculture into urban life, new technologies and alternative ways of growing food need to be developed. One could think of vertical farming, enabling roof gardens to be used for crops or something else - the key factor is increasing intensity of land use. For instance in developing nations, it could be a way for city dwellers to gain more independence.

disclaimer: Yes, I know that this entire post sounds rather naive, but I really appreciate the ideas behind urban agriculture, and therefore I didn't mention the drawbacks, challenges and problems involved.

By the way: the image above is taken from verticalfarm.com - a site on which the design for a vertical farming factory is explained.
And for more information on the subject of urban agriculture, you can check out websites, such as cityfarmer.org, ruaf.org urbanagriculture.wordpress.com or urbanagriculture-news.com. Or any of the other sources on the subject.

Always Green Grass

I don't know if I should laugh or cry. Apparently, there are plenty of people that want a perfect green lawn all year round, but either refuse to groom this or live in a climate that is hostile to this greenery. And alwaysgreengrasspainting.com has the solution for that: paint the grass. They just paint the grass! green! It's not natural, but at least it looks good!

Swimming elephants

All mammals are naturally gifted swimmers. Except for humans and other monkeys: they have to learn that.
But even knowing this, one doesn't quite expect a fully grown elephant, being as massive an animal as it is, to swim swift and gracefully...

Vertical Forrest - Stefano Boeri

This (rather ideological) plan by Stefano Boeri consists of two apartment towers of 108 and 78 metres in height. In addition to the houses, the building measures in total about 7000 square metres of forrest - about 900 trees of 6 metres height. All the trees are organized in the building according to their typical climatic demands: for instance oak facing south and birch facing north, to name something.
On top each towers, 22 wind turbines are proposed. Moreover, on the facades of the building, there is 500 square metres of solar paneling. This helps making the project energetically self-sufficient. The forrests help to build an microclimate that supplies oxigen, produces humidity and absorbs CO2 and dust.

Grow your own home

What if you'd plant a tree, and you'd end up with a house? Well, that is exactly what the people at Archinode (part of the Human Ecology Design group at MIT) have been contemplating upon. It is, of course, a very romantic idea: a completely eco-friendly building, that is taking into account it's entire impact on the environment. The result of this research has been the Fab Tree Hab (Living Tree House), for which four basic principles have been applied:

1) Use zero pesticides
2) Harvest rainwater
3) Sequester carbon
4) Eliminate material waste

Well, in their design they did just that, and a little bit more: the consequences of true green design has been taken into account. Mitchell Joachim was one of the developers at MIT, and he's now taking the concept further with the non-profit design collaborative Terreform. The idea is to allow plants to grow over a computer-designed plywood structure. Once the plants are interconnected and stable, the plywood is removed and reused. Well, of course it's a very utopian idea, but maybe someday in the future...