I have always been interested in the idea of entropy, where, in the end, nature will essentially have its way. We've seen this before in places as far ranging as
Angkor Wat in Cambodia, yet also in more modern buildings. In the upper west side of Manhattan, for example, one cannot walk a block without finding 100 year old buildings with growth up their sides. And back then, I would assume, landscape architects were not building large apartment houses, specifying ivy and wisteria to grow up the sides. Instead, nature, as it always does, began its process of decay.
Patrick Blanc has become a leading proponent of the idea of designing green into walls, into buildings. Through research, he has invented a symbiotic relationship
between what is built and what is grown. His new book, The
Vertical Garden: From Nature to City is chalk full of the research that led him to his ground breaking designs.
Moreover, there is the growing push to integrate verticality into food production. Personally, I think the perfect evolution of the vertical garden is the
vertical edible garden. What if we took inventory of left over spaces in urban centers and constructed
vertical food infrastructure, placing very local markets at the storefronts, creating mini-centers of food production throughout neighborhoods and cities?
Vertical farming could help improve our bad relationship with food in this country, it could employ thousands, it could make use of left over space.
I have always been interested in the idea of entropy, where, in the end, nature will essentially have its way. We've seen this before in places as far ranging as Angkor Wat in Cambodia, yet also in more modern buildings. In the upper west side of Manhattan, for example, one cannot walk a block without finding 100 year old buildings with growth up their sides. And back then, I would assume, landscape architects were not building large apartment houses, specifying ivy and wisteria to grow up the sides. Instead, nature, as it always does, began its process of decay. 
Patrick Blanc has become a leading proponent of the idea of designing green into walls, into buildings. Through research, he has invented a symbiotic relationship between what is built and what is grown. His new book, The Vertical Garden: From Nature to City is chalk full of the research that led him to his ground breaking designs.
Moreover, there is the growing push to integrate verticality into food production. Personally, I think the perfect evolution of the vertical garden is the vertical edible garden. What if we took inventory of left over spaces in urban centers and constructed vertical food infrastructure, placing very local markets at the storefronts, creating mini-centers of food production throughout neighborhoods and cities? Vertical farming could help improve our bad relationship with food in this country, it could employ thousands, it could make use of left over space.
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