The Future is Now

The Wall Street Journal asked a trio of designers to imagine the 'Green House of the Future', with energy efficiency as a point-of-departure. This group came up with some inventive visions - although it's telling that all of these ideas and problems could be envisioned right now with our available technology and materials. Nonetheless, the visions tell us a bit about where we're at in the mainstream and the futuristic - begging the question - what really is going to be the future. The very different visions offer a range of opportunities, from the vegetal to the technological - showing the myriad ways to solve similar problems. The question, of course is will technology or inventiveness be the key? I have my opinions (of course) but would love to hear other viewpoints.

In my opinion, the most compelling and complete entry (albeit perhaps aesthetically challenging to ones neighbors) comes from Rios Clementi Hale Studios. The project "...has a garden façade that includes chickpeas, tomatoes and other plants. The plants also provide shade and cooling. A rooftop reservoir collects water and keeps the building cool, while rooftop windmills generate energy."

I really enjoy the graphics as well - much more sketchy and visual. The green seems less integrated than 'tacked on' - sort of a growth emerging from the south facade and a traditional 3 level box opposite. It's also interesting that there are specific plants for the garden chosen... an energy, aesthetic, or personal choice?


:: image via WSJ

Next is the same story from WMD+Partners - using the powerful metaphor that has made a career - the idea of a building like a tree. Expanding the ideas of biomimicry in architecutre: "The "bark" of the house is made up of thin, insulating films that would self-clean and self-heal if damaged. A curved roof with large eaves provides shade, which lowers the heat load in summer. The "trunk," or the frame of the home, consists of carbon tubes, while the "roots" are a heat-pump system buried in the yard."

I think theoretically there is a lot of technical rigor to this proposal, as well as many of WMDs projects... and in this case it is specifically integrated... relying both of the vegetation and natural projects as well as technological adds (such as the self-healing 'bark').


:: image via WSJ

Cook + Fox take a tecno-architectural turn, with a building skin straight out of the transmaterial ideology of Star Trek. The "...house reacts to the weather, turning dark in the bright sun to insulate the house from heat and turning clear on dark days to absorb light and heat. The façade also captures rain and condensation to fill the household's water needs. Inside, walls and furniture are on rollers to take advantage of the fact that some spaces, such as bedrooms, are underutilized most of the day."

I like the form and mutability of space - but the reliance on technology feels like a cop-out. We try to solve so many problems with techno-fixes - when good design, based on micro-climate and context can do it without the patents and high-technology... and probably a lot cheaper.


:: image via WSJ

The most yawn-inducing, yet grounded design comes last - from Mouzon Design - looking at the natural environmental design techniques incorporated into a neo-traditional frame, the design: "...uses tomorrow's technologies -- as well as ancient techniques to reduce energy use. Solar paneling built into the roof and façade provides electricity and hot water. The house also employs a "breeze chimney," an ancient architectural tool, as a kind of air conditioning."

There are some laudable and interesting concepts, but none of this seems specifically futuristic or innovative - even what they envision as 'melon cradles' for growing vertical foods... seems like a future for a place that is still designing houses like they were in 1995... I guess saying it's sort of like a future happening right now.


:: image via WSJ

All in all, these exercises are somewhat interesting in giving some quick speculative idea generation potential to problem solving - and putting them into some quickly accessible visuals. This is similar to the work of Good Magazine - or the densely concentrated containers of competition graphics... but in the end, I'd say these are more the pulse of the present and less the vision of the future... So, what's really next?

Reading List: Green Roof Systems

My good friends at Wiley sent me a copy of the long-awaited 'Green Roof Systems: A Guide to the Planning, Design, and Construction of Landscapes over Structure' by Susan K Weiler and Katrin Scholz-Barth. At first glance, the book is not remarkably pretty, which is usually a sign of a reference that aims for substance over style.


:: image via Amazon

A quick page through confirmed this suspicion, as this book is loaded with valuable information. Similar to other must-have references, this is not a book you read cover-to-cover, but zoom into tidbits of information, and check on questions related to all facets of rooftop design and construction. The book provides a bit of preface and context of the larger picture of green roofs from concept and planning - but this is not the strong selling point. That comes in the details.


:: image via Green Roof Systems

And there are details. The structure of the book guides a reader through systems, materials, documentation, structure, bidding and construction, and touching on liability and maintenance. This isn't a cursory discussion either but in depth information on a number of issues and the less fun 'essentials' of sucessful ecoroof design, such as specification writing, O&M manuals, and the nuances of structural systems - all the while providing a broad range of project types and components.


:: image via Green Roof Systems

The book does tend to favor the intensive, inhabitable rooftop terrace as opposed to the more extensive 'eco' roof, which is fine as the complexity is much more immense. I believe the evolution of the genre will further the separation of these deeper rooftops from the thinner systems - although the terminology continues to be fuzzy. There is also a reliance on many iterations of Olin projects (HannaOlin, Olin Partnership, and now merely a single word: OLIN, kind of like 'Cher' or 'Madonna') This is a bit limiting in regional scope, but guess is inevitable. I imagine it's a product of the authors experience, which is pretty comprehensive, but it'd be interesting to see how, say, the WaMu center building detailing stacked up to some east coast examples. Perhaps it merely my west coast bias showing through :)

There are some great items worth noting that are absent in other publications - probably best considered a much-needed update to the seminal work 'Roof Gardens: History, Design, and Construction' by Theodore Osmundson, which has long contained the most technical, albeit dated, information. Two sections that I've had to search for in the past for good information, which are covered in detail include roofing membranes and the connection between rooftop weights and the growth of vegetation.


:: image via Green Roof Systems

As I was at our booth recently for the Ecoroof Vendor Fair, I brought along a large stack of some of my favorite Veg.itecture books, which run the gamut from simplistic to visually stunning to essential. I was somewhat dumbstruck when someone asked me what the one book I would recommend for green roof design was - half because I was thinking 'who only wants to buy one book?' and half because I just didn't have the answer. While to sell the idea and provide stunning visuals and idea generation, other books offer much greater visual stimuli, this may be the only one you should probably own if you are serious about building landscape on structure.

Ecoroof Vendor Fair

It was great to spend Saturday hanging out with an energetic group of vendors and members of the community nerding out on Veg.itecture... good times. Spreading the gospel of the green and GreenWorks.


:: image via GreenWorks

Back in the Saddle

Thanks for those whom I had a chance to meet at the recent speaking engagements... I've decided to write that book on Veg.itecture I've been toying with, so any publishers out there, drop a line. And good news, more posts coming soon... for now, visit the flickr page from the fabulous Friends of the High Line... for your veg.itectural fix.


:: image via Friends of the High Line

Tonight: Habitats/Veg.itecture

integrating habitats defining veg.itecture

asla oregon - mt. hood section lecture

1515 SE Water Street - Suite 100

April 14, 2008 - 5:30pm

Two current trends that offer myriad opportunities for landscape architecture include trends towards truly integrated habitats and definitions of veg.itecture, the insertion of vegetation into architectural form. Jason King, ASLA LEED and Brett Milligan ASLA will provide an overview of both topics and provide an open forum for discussion of these important trends.

Part I will give a detailed account of their award-winning entry for the Metro Integrating Habitats Competition entitled Urban Ecotones: Transitional Spaces for Commerce and Culture. The proposal provides a vision for how innovative big box development design can regenerate, rather than destroy lowland hardwood forest habitat corridors within the expanding city of Portland. Using the model Nature in Neighborhoods ordinance as a guide, and Landscape Urbanism theory as a framework, the proposal is informed by time based, economic and ecological systems to provide an adaptive development model for the shift from fossil fuel dependency to a more localized economy. Particular attention is given to the thresholds at which commercial development meets natural systems. Rather than seeing these interactions as points of confrontation, they are approached as environments of unique richness—a synergy of both habitats akin to an ecotone: the transitional area between two ecosystems containing more diversity and biotic activity than singular habitats.

Part II will provide an engaging visual investigation of the recent trend of Veg.itecture and its impact on the allied professions of architecture and landscape architecture – including the representative, descriptive, and technical. This concept builds on and transcends our current implementation of simple rooftop gardens, ecoroofs, and living walls to encompass a holistic and integrated approach to design intervention that blurs the lines between landscape and architecture. Topics include a definition of the concept, including the eight common typologies of veg.itecture in action, and how this phenonomenon impacts and expands the practice of landscape architecture. In addition to providing this veg.itectural primer, the presentation will include a survey of recent projects from around the world as featured on Jason King’s blog Landscape+Urbanism including the work of Ken Yeang, Jean Nouvel, Patrick Blanc, Hundertwasser, Urbanarbolismo, James Corner, Mass Studies, and many more.

There will be time at the end for a thorough discussion of both topics, offering the chance to discuss, dispute, expand, and question these exciting topics that have current and future resonance for our profession.

VIVA + VIA Sneak Peek

The inevitable issue with taking a break, even for a couple of weeks, from blogging, is that the flows of project ideas and concepts wait for no one and begin to pile up in a somewhat annoying fashion... so I have a massive backlog of projects to show off... and as it's late - a quick peek at some new ones before I get far into the projects. And as there seems to be a predominance of quick visual blogs popping up - I'm hoping to get some good dialogue and information going about both the visual and the realized.

For the (Veg.itecture in Visual Assessment) VIVA - GRAFT Architects and the “ao project” is a fantastic example of how wild the concept of Veg.itecture has come (via The Design Blog - via Designboom for much more). Or on another hand, it's an example of what happens to your glassy modern box if it gets lost in the back of the fridge for a month or so.






:: images via The Design Blog

And for the (Veg.itecture in Action) VIA we have the long-awaited Vancouver Convention Center (or Centre, depending on your location) - featuring the largest green roof in Canada... more on this one soon for sure.


:: image via Jetson Green

Malcolm Wells: Infra Structures

Subtitled "Life support for the nation's circulatory system", the 1994 book Infra Structures by Malcolm Wells offers a chance to revisit the integration of our architecture and infrastructural systems - appropriate for our new found interest in the workings of our society and urbanity. The the juxtaposed pipe/greenery on the cover, the thrust of this book is quite specific from the get-go.


:: image via Malcolm Wells

Wells has a cult following as a purveyor of early ecological design, particularly his notable installations and visuals of underground architecture. The interesting thing about the book is not so much another treatise regarding massive projects and the myriad ways architecture can influence these, but rather how they MUST exert influence to infrastructure in a positive way. The separation of the word into the separates of 'infra' (below) and 'structure' (something constructed) alludes to this architectural dualism.

:: something constructed below - images via Infra Structures

:: Subterranean Shopping Mall - image via Infra Structures


:: green covered boat house - image via Infra Structures

The 'story', if you will, leads us on a tour of future buildings and structures that exist in the not-too-distant-future, strangely enough more a contemporary vision of the early 21st Century. Based on the preponderance of veg.itecture in the world, Wells may have been somewhat prophetic (p.23):

"... I hesitate to make any but the most general of predictions for even the next 50 years. With everyting changing at an ever-faster rate it would be silly to stick my neck out too far. The only thing to do is try to make our buildings adaptable to greatly changed, rapidly changing occupancies. ... Animals and plants will continue to need the out-of-doors in life on earth to be sustained. That means underground architecture for the human species."

Although the words aren't half bad, my favorite aspect of Wells' book is the visuals - a throwback to an era that could've existed anywhere between the 1960s and today - but with a simple pen/ink/watercolor combo that is both illustrative and evocative. While some may bristle at the dated 'look' of the graphics, they are successful in their goal - communicate intent, form, and materials. Call it graphics for veg.itectural non-form. A common theme is ubiquitous infrastructure - such as the highway... snaking through virtually everywhere, the linear path that severs can be re-imagined into habitat corridors and earth sheltered bridges.






:: land bridge - images via Infra Structures

The books' author offers some fun with the text, resorting to comic-book like thought bubbles to illustrate the point, as below (p.21): "It would be nice if animals - as well as plants - could make use of the land-to-land connection bridges offer human travelers. And the all-weather aspect of covered roadways does have a lot of appeal... But an earth-covered bridge? Come on. Next thing you know he'll be proposing underground airports."


:: elements of graphic novel - image via Infra Structures

And there is plenty of infrastructure, including highways, bridges, wastewater treatment, sports stadiums, and the aforementioned underground airport... looking much like a storyboard from The Empire Strikes Back zooming over the mood of Endor.


:: underground airport


:: sub-surface sports complex


:: ferry terminal with under greenery parking


:: city-scale living machine for waste treatment - images via Infra Structures

So what can we learn from looking back at some of the work and visuals of Malcolm Wells? While again we can see the vision of this man who looked at infrastructure as both a design problem and environmental solution - leading the way to what could literally be the emergence of figuratively and literally green architecture. Perhaps it's a nudge to pull out your sketchbook and envision a reality beyond what's sitting on your desk, in your computer, or outside your window, but what could be. Finally, it's a call to arms for architecture (and more broadly the allied arts) to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. From Infra Structures, p. 29:

"What a structure does, that is, how it acts upon the world around it, is far more important that how it looks. That would seem to go without saying, but it appears never to have concerned those of us who have built over our rich America land. ...If a building, a bridge, a dock, or a road destroys land, it's simply not doing its job. A handsome structure that kills land is an enemy, and we are only now slowly coming to realize it. If, on the other hand, the structure is kind to the land, chances are that it will be its very appropriateness be both appealing and beautiful."


:: image via Infra Structures

Veg.itecture: VIA Roofs

As the dialogue around green roofs shows that we've come a long way in vision and implementation. There seems a veritable cornucopia of projects and thinking on the subject. Read this interview with green roof plant expert Ed Snodgrass via Skygardens, and some more reinforcement of habitat potential for rooftops via Treehugger for some applied knowledge. Haven Kiers and Linda Velasquez offer some green roof hot ideas for 2009 - which are compelling but lacking in great detail... as a complement to my 2009 predictions as well.

As for projects, Treehugger swoops in with the obvious that green roofs are not new - stating that Europe has been vegetating rooftops for centuries... so yeah, there is a difference between these older models and the modern equivalents. Utterly shocking :)


:: image via Urban Greenery

They go on to point out a wonderful example from the 1950s by architect Richard Neutra for this sod-rooftopped, mid-century modern gem in Bozeman, Montana.




:: images via SpaceInvading

A Daily Dose of Architecture offers a variation on the theme, with earth-sheltered bunkers tucked into the hillsides or laced with subterranean tunnels, which has also been making quite a resurgence in our terror-prone times. A couple of cooler examples.


:: Federal Reserve Communications and Records Center - image via Archidose


:: Library of Congress - Packard Campus - image via Archidose

And the partially earth-sheltered, for instance this Mies van der Rohe Award finalist for this green roofed Multimodal Centre in Nice, France.


:: image via Bustler

Urban Greenery has been hard at work with some images of older green roof projects in North America, including these pioneering varieties:


:: LDS Convention Center, Salt Lake City - image credit American Hydrotech


:: Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Reseach Center, Connecticut - image credit American Hydrotech


:: Library Square Building, Vancouver, BC - image credit American Hydrotech

And another project that is reminiscent of Mountain Dwellings by BIG, which was recently awarded a Forum AID Award) for Architect... is an older project from Tadao Ando for the Awaji Yumebutai Conference Centre in Japan.




:: images via SpaceInvading

Finally, another shot or two of these infamous Mountain Dwellings a few weeks back I made the distinction, similar to Edouard Francois' Eden Bio building - the the reality left us feeling a bit, lacking. Follow-up, here's some other angles that show the brief emergence of green and a bit of redemption in this author's mind... still a ways to go, but heading in the right direction.




:: images via Arch Daily


:: image via Bustler

Veg.itecture: VIA Walls

As I recently mentioned, there is a steady parade of visuals promoting the veg.itectural - which make sense. The distance from idea to implementation is a common theme, and requires an amazingly large amount of coordination, client will, and ingenuity. We are constantly underwhelmed by the result - but more often amazed by what is actually available when the all of the stars align. A pair of posts, starting here, looks at the updated walls and roofs in the Vegitecture series.

WALLS
Walls... living, green, vegetated? Where to start. Jetson Green goes retro in an advert/post for Green Screen the old standby trellis system used on many a project. Urban Greenery drops a few old projects from Patrick Blanc in both Thailand and France. And for some newer content, first, via Inhabitat, is from Mexico City's El Japonez Restaurant, by Serrano Cherrem Architects‘ project with an inventive solid wall of vegetation. The wall, aside from being stunning, has purpose: "More than decorative in nature, the wall helps keep the thermostat steady throughout the year while infusing the interior spaces with fresh air." See some images and details below.

:: images via Inhabitat

Following up, a more more intricate (and less real fo sho) project by bluarch Architecture that for The Greenhouse Nightclub provides alternating discs of vinyl 'vegetation', LED lights, and wood - which oddly enough are supposed to "...convey the dynamic richness of nature as a living system." Read and see much more at Contemporist.

:: images via Contemporist

So you decide. Is the 'living system' or the artificial 'dynamic richness of nature' more successful? I guess they are both relevant, but real vs. metaphorical nature is one of those easy ones to get polarized about... Another hybrid is the Mossenger, spotted via VULGARE in the post Mossenger. The project entitled 'Sporeborn' by Anna Garforth uses moss as ink for wall-mounted writing.

:: images via VULGARE

Finally, I mentioned an interior living wall to go along with the Flowerbox building, and here's a pic - design by pulltab, image via Contemporist.

:: image via Contemporist