Benefits Of Vertical Landscaping

Posted on July 1, 2012 If you think that just by knowing the techniques of planting trees on buildings is going to let you have your clients approval on your proposal; you are in for a big disappointment. One important thing to keep in mind is that client never sees things the way an architect would. This is even more so when you are dealing with a commercial developer. They are more interested in how your proposal can help them generate more revenue for their company. When presenting your green proposal to your client, you must make sure that you highlight key elements that they want to hear. Usually, architects make the mistake of focusing on themselves instead during presentation. They try to show off how intelligent they are and how their proposal represents the architectural breakthrough of the time. Clients are not interested in your achievement, they are more interested to know what you can do for them. In short, you need to focus on THEM; not YOU. Furthermore, when you try to propose landscaping for a project, it surely means additional cost will be needed to make it work. As cost is always a sensitive topic from the clients perspective, you must make the extra effort to convince them that the additional cost is essential and will benefit the project in the long term. Therefore it is very important to list down the benefits of planting on buildings to your client so that they may possibly accept your proposal.

Benefits of vertical landscaping:

If the proposal includes sky courts at high level of the building, then plants can act as wind breaker and ensuring the comfort of the residents utilizing this facility.

Besides acting as wind breaker, plants can also play the role of sound diffusers and visual screens to reduce sound, smell and other major distractions from the urban landscape below. Residents will then enjoy a more serene environment of their home. Plants can help to soften the hard architectural masses and surfaces. This can make the building unique in the context of its surrounding. The client can then take pride in having a unique iconic building. Through photosynthesis, plants absorb carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide (mainly emitted by vehicles), and produce oxygen thereby creating a healthier and cooler environment within the building. This translates to healthier lifestyle for the residents. Evaporation process of plants can significantly cool down the temperature of the building. Less energy is needed for air conditioning. Electrical bill of residents can be effectively reduced. In a city environment where there are many buildings with glass faade, heat reflection and glare from these buildings can pose major problem to the residents. Through vertical landscaping, plants can shade these negative impact from neighboring buildings effectively.

These major benefits highlighted will ensure a better quality and healthier lifestyle to the people residing in the building. Once people are able to see the potential of your building to improve their life, they are more likely to purchase a unit from this project. Your client, the developer will enjoy a successful launch and sale for their project at the end of the day. And you will also be celebrating as your proposal is not only accepted but you will also be recognized by the public as a responsible and creative architect. For more related articles, refer:

How To Ensure The Success Of Landscaping In High Rise Building Green-ing The Skyscraper Innovative Social Housing Urban Design Work With Nature

Posted in Architecture | Tagged architectural presentation, architectural proposal, architecture, architecture and nature, benefits of vertical landscaping, design, eco design, facade design, green architecture, green design, high rise residential, , , | Leave a reply

How To Ensure The Success Of Landscaping In High Rise Building

Posted on June 24, 2012 Planting on high rise buildings poses many challenges that wont be faced on ground level landscaping. One needs to ensure the survival of the plant by considering the 3 major elements that are natural lighting, irrigation and soil condition. These are the 3 fundamentals ingredients which would ensure the healthy growth of plants on buildings. In order to achieve this aim, the

building design has to incorporate more features to cater to these needs. Design considerations such as natural lighting, structural loading, irrigation and drainage system have to be meticulously planned and thought out before the building is constructed. Natural Lighting It is always highly recommended that there is sufficient direct sunlight to the planting as it is energy efficient and naturally healthy for the plants growth. This should be easily achieved if the plants are situated at the periphery of the building. However, if there are adjacent tall buildings nearby that might cast shadows on a particular faade of your building; the growth of plants may be hampered in this area. In other words, the orientation of the building is of utmost importance in capturing natural light. If the plants are located indoors, then clear glass is recommended in order to let in maximum day lighting into the interior of the space. Reflective or tinted glass is to be avoided in terms of indoor landscaping. There should also be good ventilation to prevent heat from building up indoors. Depth of Soil Generally a soil depth of 600mm is sufficient to sustain a tree of up to 5 meters tall. Besides depth, the area of the soil is also important as plants roots grow in a horizontal manner. The top soil layer is about 400mm thick and it is here that most nutrients needed by the plants are found. Therefore when designing for the buildings structural system, these additional requirements have to be carefully considered. Irrigation Due to the high degree of exposure and limited soil depths in a planted skyscraper; irrigation becomes more crucial than ever. Consistent supply must be made available for the continuous growth of plants. Preferably the plants should be watered manually. A water supply outlet should be provided no greater than 30 meters from the plants. Alternatively, a gravity-fed drip system controlled by stop-cocks can also be used with sprinkler heads installed inside the planter boxes to feed water and fertilizers to the plants at designated times throughout the day. Drainage System Once there is a watering system in place, you then have to think about an efficient drainage system to drain away excess water from irrigation as well as rain. Ideally there should have 2 floor traps in the planter box; one at the bottom and one on top for draining over flow water. Without proper drainage system, the excess water may travel into the adjacent rooms and create more problems indoors. The piping routes that carry the drained water will be quite extensive if

you have large areas of landscaping in the building. To avoid disturbing the aesthetic quality of the building, this piping system has to be hidden by means of plaster ceiling or box-up pillars. It is essential that these elements are included in the architectural drawings before going for tender in order to prevent any additional cost that may arise in the future.

For more

related articles on this topic; do read:

Green-ing The Skyscraper The History of Roof-Top Design Urban Design Work With Nature

Posted in Architecture | Tagged architecture, architecture and nature, design, facade design, high rise residential, landscaping in the sky, sky gardens, vertical planting | Leave a reply

Green-ing The Skyscraper

Posted on June 23, 2012 Traditionally people live close to the ground where the house is surrounded by either elaborate gardens or simple landscaping which has long become the ideal image of a home. However, due to advance in technology that results in the population explosion of the world; this holistic ideal of a home become an almost impossible dream especially in megacities which have all sorts of convenience in abundance except land. Skyrocketing land costs have eventually given birth to skyscrapers in order to cater to the high demand for housing. The design of skyscrapers have forced people to live further away from the ground and elevated them halfway in the sky where there is a lack of communal interaction horizontally. You cant hear your neighbors dog barks; you cant smell the freshness of the earth whenever rain drops hit the ground and you can never communicate with your neighbor as you are tending to your flowers. All the basic human interactions are greatly reduced when living in a skyscraper. The only advantage of living high up is that you are now able to get a birds eye view of the city below. However, you can only see and not interact. Given so much disadvantages associated with high rise living, does it mean that skyscrapers are no longer relevant to our society? No, and in fact skyscrapers are here to stay! With the current state of population growth, there is no going back to landed housing especially if you are living in cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. The only way designers and architects can help to reduce the negative impact skyscrapers have on human life is through creative design solutions. The very minimum and most straight forward solution is to give back the gardens to people living in high rise building. It has to be a proper garden like what we have on ground and not just a few pots of flowers and plants. Skyscrapers are basically multiple floor planes stacked on top of one another in a discontinuous manner. This poses the biggest challenge if one tries to landscape the entire building. Conventionally, architects simply designed planter boxes at the buildings faades and hoped that residents will eventually plant something in them. Unfortunately, most of the planter boxes will eventually be converted either into balcony or simply as an extension to the living room. Some even decided not to do anything with it and the planter boxes ended up bare and aesthetically destructive.

To achieve success in greening the skyscraper, the conditions that we are familiar with on ground has to be recreated as much as possible on higher levels. The ideal situation will be the landscaping is extended upwards from ground in a continuous manner so as to prevent a break in the ecological system of the landscape design. Architect Dr. Ken Yeang has managed to achieve this in his building through spiraling ecological linkages between floors.

Sky gardens and communal spaces are then introduced at several intervals across the height of the

skyscraper as to breakdown the building into several clusters. The verticality of the skyscraper is significantly watered down in this way as opportunities for horizontal interaction are now being introduced. The psychological impact by having gardens in the sky is indeed significant as the residents are able to perceive their living territories as being more than just the 1,000 sq.ft. of space that they own. The garden becomes an extension of their living space much like what we have traditionally on a landed house.

To read more on green design; visit:

How To Ensure The Success of Landscaping In High Rise Building The History of Roof-Top Design Urban Design Work With Nature

Posted in Architecture | Tagged architecture, architecture and nature, design, green architecture, high rise living, high rise residential, sky court, sky garden, vertical landscaping, , , , | Leave a reply

Seafront Living @ Queensbay, Penang

Posted on April 17, 2012 The boom is indeed here to stay with development all across the state due to the high demand for prominent schemes on the ever precious land of Penang island. Major developments by the big boys all focus on living by the sea due to its significance property value. However, most developers stop right there in their marketing strategy and do not go beyond the location to look into adding design values to their projects. Most will come up with square boxes with maximum glazing and balconies as the norm in high rise residential design. Few would put extra effort and time to explore the possibility of challenging the typology of residential building design and come up with creative solution to our growing population. However, there is one project by Asian Green Group which manage to stay away from common practice and at least try to push the envelope. The project is called Seafront and it is located right next to the popular Queensbay Mall.

The unique salient point of this project no doubt is its location close to the sea with potential view of the Second Penang Bridge. But more interesting aspect of this project lies in its architecture which allow for substantial void areas to intersperse its facade. These empty volume of spaces act as green lung to the building so that the residents will enjoy garden facilities even if they stay on higher floors. Such generous design is indeed hard to come by in the local scene which focus more on maximizing floor area to reap highest profit for the developer. If the actual building is built as per the impressive perspective shown above, this project may set new

benchmark for high density residential design in the region.

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Worlds First Vertical Forest, Now Under Construction 22 May 2012 | Subscribe to RSS | Get news delivered to your email

In Milan, Italy, architects are tackling the problems of the concrete jungle by building a vertical forest in the city. Called Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest), the vertical forest will host of 900 trees, 5,000 bushes and 11,000 plantsspan across the balconies of two residential towers 110 and 76 meters high, in the center of Milan. Boeristudio architects (Stefano Boeri, Gianandrea Barreca, and Giovanni La Varra) believe that the Bosco Vertical will help produce oxygen and humidity, absorb CO2 and dust particles, and reduce noise pollution.

[via Stefano Boeri]

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Green zone: From neat patches of grass to vertical cascading plants and high-rise garden beds, Melbourne apartment buildings are embracing green spaces. It wasn't that long ago that a green space in an apartment was nothing more than a pot plant on a balcony but these days new developments are increasingly incorporating multi-use green spaces into their designs. "If you can soften highly urbanised environments with nature, or an interpretation of nature or pockets of nature or faces of nature, that's a really good thing," says architect Karl Fender. Plants, he says, provide soft edges, shade, amenity and visual delight. With many of them ending up on the roof of these inner-city apartment towers, they also have benefits in terms of climate change, which is why the City of Melbourne has several green-roof initiatives. "Green roofs can cool hot cities, reduce stormwater drainage and provide a layer of soil-like material and plants, helping to insulate buildings year round. They also enhance our urban landscape, creating social and leisure environments," reads the City of Melbourne website.
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People are moving into the inner city but many are wanting a little piece of that old-fashioned backyard to come with them. So developers, says Shane Williams, are responding to market demand. "They know if they want to sell their apartments quickly they will need to offer these sorts of facilities in order to get the sales they want," he says. Williams is a design principal from Cottee Parker Architects, the firm behind the Upper West Side development (the block bordered by Spencer, Lonsdale, Little Bourke streets and Rose Alley).

Four separate high-rise towers will be linked by a podium-level garden, rising and falling between five and seven floors above street level in total about 0.4 of a hectare. Once complete, this rooftop parkland will become one of the largest green spaces in the Melbourne CBD. "An acre of land gets used up pretty quickly. It sounds big but it doesn't take long to fill it," says Williams. Upper West Side will eventually include 2500 apartments a "vertical village", he says so the accompanying green space is designed to make the area more livable. Like other developments, such as The Quays on Victoria Harbour, which will have a rooftop garden with barbecue facilities, Upper West Side's green space will feature barbecue and recreational areas, as well as flowers and trees. "The apartments themselves are typically quite small, which is the general trend at the moment, but that has other benefits in enabling people to actually get in there and purchase because they are affordable. So creating facilities for barbecues and the like, where people can congregate with their friends, is important," Williams says. "The other thing we're really pushing is the community garden idea, which is quite popular in inner-suburban areas. We've earmarked certain areas for that as well, particularly on the north face." There'll also be composting centres and rainwater will be captured and used on these rooftop gardens. Salta Properties' Green Square apartments, a stone's throw from Victoria Gardens shopping centre on the Abbotsford side of Victoria Street, is a collection of low-rise apartment buildings around, as the name suggests, a "green square". The outdoor space, designed by landscape architect Jack Merlo, of Jack Merlo Design, is a recreational hub, which will feature semi-secluded and open spaces including a cascading edge pool, barbecue areas, day beds and shaded spaces. Merlo is also landscape architect for the Sunday apartments on Coventry Street, Southbank, which are to be dotted with "green breaks". Breezeways will link apartments between towers and staggered on alternate floors, from the fifth to the 13th, will be wide bridges, featuring landscaped gardens and benches. Palms trees will border the north-facing outdoor pool and spa and upright plantings, such as bamboo, will feature in the 10-metre-wide courtyard. Jack Merlo Designs has also created a twostorey void in the lobby. Carved from the building and filled at ground level with cylindrical bamboo planters and low-growing ivy, it will be complemented by overhead trailing plants. Vertical green spaces are also gaining ground in tight inner-urban areas with space issues; designed well, they are also points of aesthetic interest. Using nature as a key influence, Elenberg Fraser's low-rise Illura apartments in West Melbourne will feature external "living walls" of native grasses and plants over three levels.

This will complement the low-lying greenery and bamboo garden that is part of the courtyard between buildings, which is enclosed by a glass walkway. Illura's lobby, while not an actual green space, has been inspired by one. Referencing rainforests, it will feature wicker, timber and green stone panels interspersed with mirrored panels, to visually suggest tree trunks and create a forest effect. And green spaces need not be limited to the outdoors. Hamton's 50 Albert in South Melbourne will have a "tranquil indoor garden retreat". Mirvac's Yarra Point, opposite Point Park on Yarra's Edge at Docklands, will have a two-level lobby featuring mature trees, a garden of succulents and bluestone paving that extends from the nearby park into the building. When they enter, residents will feel as if they are walking through a private garden, says Mirvac's design director, Julian Venning. "To accentuate the foliage, an interior heart has also been established with the creation of a central feature wall in warm ochre tones," he says. At 108 Flinders, a 12-storey building directly across the road from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and Federation Square, the upper-ground floor will house an internal courtyard. Architect Karl Fender, from project designers Fender Katsalidis Architects, describes it as being "a lyrical interpretation of a green space". Shade is provided by a canopy of unique suspended upside down model trees, while underfoot are stone tiles and glass-bottomed water features, to refract ambient, dappled light below. "It's more of an urban courtyard and it's more of a highly sculptured space which has a lyrical connection to landscaping by turning it upside down philosophically, in a way," he says. "People love gardens . . . why shouldn't they have gardens if they live in an apartment? Anyway that it can be done, whether it's pocket parks, the greening of buildings, the greening of roofs, the greening of facades . . . is fantastic." ts the glamour apartment complex where the plants outside the windows will be as upwardly mobile as the residents. Click here for video commentary At the Andreasens Green wholesale nursery in Lansvale, 30,000 shrubs, which will soon form the worlds tallest vertical garden, are already being grown, horizontally to adorn the vertiginous facades of the new One Central Park complex. A further 70,000 or so plants, totalling nearly 360 exotic and native species, are being cultivated at several locations around Australia. The shrubs at Lansvale, in Sydneys south-west, are destined for two dozen green wall panels, some as high as 16-storeys, which will be attached to the north and south facades of the developments east and west towers facing Broadway. The vertical garden is the brainchild of the renowned French artist-botanist Patrick Blanc, in collaboration with Central Parks architect, the Frances Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Jean

Nouvel. Keith Stead, a landscape architect with Aspect Oculus in Sydney, is a member of the team working with Blanc.

Green screen an artists impression of the One Central Park apartments and the vertical garden Something like this has never been done on this scale, he said of the $2 billion project under construction at Broadway, Chippendale. It has to be one of Patrick Blancs biggest installations and it must be interesting for him to be doing a project of this scale in Australia, especially since hes chosen some unusual native plants. The chosen shrubs, from Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria and NSW, are designed to spill over planter boxes or climb up cables, creating a calming green screen in the middle of the inner city. Species include varieties of red, pink and purple bougainvillea, dwarf bottle brushes, with deep-red flowers, and vine species with flowers in whites, reds, yellows and purples. The 110-metre-high One Central Park apartment and retail complex, on the former Carlton and United brewery site, is due for completion next year. The dramatic greening process should begin between October and February, when the plants will be brought to the site from their various nurseries. In addition to Blancs signature green walls, 2700 planter boxes, containing a special mix of durable soil, have already been installed and are awaiting tens of thousands of shrubs. Between

the more exclusive levels 29 to 33 of the complexs east tower, residents will enjoy their own private lushly planted cantilevered Sky Garden that juts from the facade. Stead says Aspect Oculus has tested individual shrubs destined for the facades in a St Peters wind tunnel laboratory in order to assess their suitability to Sydneys variable climate. Stead says it was the first time the laboratory had tested plants. In their unusually elevated and exposed positions, the plants will need to be able to withstand Sydneys gusty and gale-force winds, occasional heatwaves and relatively high levels of humidity. To this end, Aspect Oculus has drawn up a colour-coded plan of the facades with different zones of exposure, based on wind and sun levels, that will guide where each plant should best be planted. The biggest challenge has just been working out how to get this much greenery on a building, and making sure that it will grow and thrive, Stead said. Of course, maintenance will be a factor in Central Parks vertical garden being a blooming success, with all planted areas to be meticulously maintained by the owners corporation. A hydroponic system will automatically water and fertilise the vertical garden, which Stead promises has been designed not to gush on to those below.