Patrick Blanc
ON SOME LEVEL, THERE’S nothing really revolutionary about green walls. Any city worth its salt has a smattering of old architecture in its downtown core with leafy green vines climbing up its Corinthian facade. We call these buildings part of our collective heritage, and we protect them from market forces, making sure they stay where they are, despite the real estate race going on around them. And the older the better! In the most exaggerated examples, we call them wonders of the world and make pilgrimages to these places of beauty, as in the Angkor Temples of Cambodia, pictured below. There’s something primal about vines intertwining that touches an emotional chord for most humans — probably something to do with our simian ancestry. But climbing vines are just one vertical possiiblity — there’s no reason to stop there, at the monocultural option.
NOW THAT WE’VE FIRMLY established the importance of green roofs… what about green walls? There’s no reason that plants have to be relegated to horizontal surfaces — that’s inflexible human thinking. Vegetation can’t get up and walk around, but it can sure climb… the tallest tree that’s still standing on Earth reaches over 112 metres — five stories higher than the Statue of Liberty! To dispel our preconceptions about the possibilities for plant life on the Y-axis, let’s begin this trilogy of blogs about bio-walls with the work and words of the world’s best designer / builder of “vegitecture“, Patrick Blanc.
