A vertical forest is expected to be completed this year in Milan. There are two tower apartment complexes which contain a total of 400 residential units. The facade of the buildings will be covered with 730 trees, 5,000 shrubs, and 11,000 perennial plants. It is expected to have the same ecological impact as 10,000 square meters of forest.
Aside from fighting smog and producing oxygen, the foliage is expected to provide insulation to the residential units.
It’ll be really cool to see how these trees grow in order to maximize access to sun, water, and nutrients. Also, a step towards a sci-fi solar punk future – I’m in.
I sure hope the structural engineers planned for the buildings to increase in mass as the trees grow.
Well, or else for maintenance labor to keep the trees rigorously trimmed to prevent too much increase in mass. Or both? (The wikipedia article says the engineering team consulted botanists and horticulturists in planning how much weight the buildings could bear, so it seems likely that the fact that trees grow would have come up.)
This is a pretty cool idea regardless and I hope they get it right. I wonder if anyone will do anything like this in New York.
This falls in the “I really hope they do it but I’ll believe it when I see it” category for me.
It’s been up for 2 years, inaugurated in October 2014, and still going strong. It’s won multiple awards.
I just read the links, and omg this is even better.
So I looked at it and knew it was using the open courtyard and the pools and fountains to do a lot of the work of cooling the house, but it’s also got drip irrigation for all of those plants (which adds more moisture to the air and also helps cool it in addition to being an effective and efficient way of watering the plants), it’s got a roof garden and other eco-conscious stuff. It combines modern construction techniques with classic Arabic art and architecture.
And his home is a cultural center.
He holds lectures, concerts and salons in his home, with guests and speakers from around the world. He’s founded multiple institutions to preserve Islamic history and architecture. He’s an activist against the extremist factions he says are trying to hijack Islam.
His home is going to be part of an international institute offering degrees in Islamic history and science, as his legacy, housing a collection of over one hundred thousands of his photos, drawings and writings about Islam and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
This is serious real-life Islamic solarpunk for real.
Tumblr likes the idea of solarpunk, even if there’s not a real body of work about it yet. Well, we’re missing that people are already doing this for real, and have been for a long time.
I am not generally an architecture fan. It’s nice and all, but it doesn’t do a lot for me, especially modern American stuff. But I am totally bowled over by this and must now go look at everything he’s ever designed.
Appearing like trenches dragged into the earth, sunken lanes,
also called hollow-ways or holloways, are centuries-old thoroughfares
worn down by the traffic of time. They’re one of the few examples of
human-made infrastructure still serving its original purpose, although
many who walk through holloways don’t realize they’re retracing
ancient steps.
There are sea organisms and fungi which glow in the dark and there’s fireflies and jellyfish which glow in the dark. It doesn’t do them any harm nor does it do the people around them any harm. I would say its pretty healthy, as well as it would mean more photosynthesis happening in cities which mean cleaner air.
I was just curious about how they were doing it and for some reason I didn’t think to click the link. But thanks! It makes more sense now. I was afraid it was some kind of chemical thing.
nah just genetic modification using existing bioluminescent genes. Genetics is really cool, and so is bioluminescence. I mean they’ve already made pigs glow using jellyfish genes and pigs are waaay more complicated than trees iirc. So they’re actually (i think) less likely to muck it up with trees.
In which case
GLOWY
FORESTS
GLOWY
TREES
GLOWY
EVERYTHING
(I like glowy things)
means more trees which is good
uses less electricity which is good (for both tax reasons and also just because reasons)
Scientists invented fabric that makes
electricity from motion and sunlight.
To create the fabric, researchers at
Georgia Tech wove together solar
cell fibers with materials that generate
power from movement. It could be
used in “tents, curtains, or wearable
garments,” meaning we’d virtually
never be without power. Source
In the early 1800s a man named Little Jon lived in this so called earth cabin (swe. ‘backstuga’) located in southern Småland, Sweden. An earthen cabin is built partially buried in the ground, in this case there’s three walls of stone and one wall made of wood. In Sweden earthen cabins was common in the forests from the 1600s until the late 1800s. Link
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