Planted buildings: Is this the Future of Our Cities or Just an Eco-Fantasy?

The trend for “green” eco-fantasy buildings is sweeping the world of architecture, with designers now integrating gardens, terraces and all manner of vertical planting in their specifications for office blocks, apartment buildings and even skyscrapers.

***By Tim Richardson*** 

“Starchitects” such as Daniel Libeskind and Philippe Starck, who a few years ago would have scoffed at the idea that their sleek and shiny building might incorporate something as embarrassingly domestic and “unmodern” as a garden, are now getting in on the act, and displaying a new-found zeal for horticulture.

The Park Royal, Singapore CREDIT: PATRICK BINGHAM-HALL

The world’s tallest vertical garden – One Central Park in Sydney, Australia – was opened earlier this year and “green” buildings, which are often literally green thanks to vertical planting and tree balconies, are springing up in countries across the globe where corporations and civic authorities are keen to trumpet their eco-credentials (that is: pretty much everywhere). 

One Central Park, Sydney, with vertical garden by French botanist Patrick Blanc  CREDIT: JAMES D. MORGAN /GETTY IMAGES ASIAPAC

Singapore, which as long ago as 1967 decided to brand itself as a “garden city”, has established itself as a centre for this kind of work, and now China is also enthusiastically adopting both the green technology and – crucially – the green look for new city developments. But it’s a trend with tentacles that reach far and wide; Google’s plans for its new headquarters in King’s Cross, London, specify a long, low building – a “landscraper”, no less – with a massive and complex roof garden element.

The idea of a “green building” is not particularly new, of course. The Sixties saw the first buildings designed to take into account their environmental impact and energy performance. But even into the Nineties these buildings were considered rather specialised and self-consciously “progressive”. And they often looked – paradoxically – intimidatingly industrial, with their arrays of solar panels, visible pipes and complex window arrangements.

Latterly, environmental legislation has meant that many elements once considered “ecological” are now invisibly integrated into architectural plans; nowadays they are more likely to be described as “smart”. And there has been a growing understanding among urban designers that the building itself can be only part of the story – a cog in the environmental machine our cities might become. As Stefan Behling, of Foster + Partners, has argued:

“The way a city is designed affects your need for energy and transport. A resident of Copenhagen consumes a ninth of the energy a resident of Detroit consumes, even though the two cities are in more or less the same climate zone.”

Google Headquarters, King's Cross, London  CREDIT: HAYESDAVIDSON

Petrol consumption, a key environmental indicator, is directly related to the density of a city. One of the slightly counter-intuitive notions advanced by “urbanists” is that denser cities make for better cities, in all ways. And density – think Holland Park, west London – is often more attractive than sprawl – think faceless suburbia.

While all this is accepted in the mainstream design world, the change seen over the past five years or so is that we have entered a new era of eco-fantasy architecture. Environmental elements that may in practice have a fairly limited effect on a building’s performance – green cladding and roof gardens, for example – are now being used dramatically and expressively to advertise the eco-credentials of client and architect. And almost all of these are luxury developments funded by private investment – “being green” is now seen as a core aspirational value.

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles

In that sense, some of these new developments might be said to be suffering from a form of “greenwash” – that is, the shallow and cynical appropriation of “green” values for commercial and political gain. The awkward fact is, a tree on a balcony does not do a great deal to save the planet. The first building in the US to attain a “gold” level of environmental certification was the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2007), designed by the British architect David Adjaye. The fact that this structure does not “look” green is one of the paradoxes of sustainable architecture – it’s largely about the “invisible” functionality of the building.

Real environmentalists might say that making these showy fantasy-eco buildings, in the context of climate change, is like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. And while the computer-generated impressions of these new buildings always show thriving green balconies, gardeners will suspect that only a minority of occupants will have the skill and the will to maintain them.

China World Trade Center in Beijing, designed by Andrew Bromberg of Aedas 

Perhaps such criticisms are a little unfair, because in practice nearly all of these eco-fantasy buildings also use strategies such as cross-ventilation (instead of air-conditioning in hot countries), water catchment systems, overall reductions in energy consumption and the use of locally sourced sustainable construction materials, as well as new “intelligent” materials. So perhaps we should not be too cynical about the skyscraper that sprouts trees, the hotel with a vertical “organic farm” in its atrium, or the office block with a waterfall on its terrace.

One senses, in any case, that this is an architectural trend that will be short-lived. In a decade’s time we may look back upon the eco-fantasy buildings of 2015-25 as a slightly twee moment in the development of our environmental consciousness: the era of “Eco Kitsch”. 

In the meantime, let’s enjoy gawping at these fantastical creations as they go up with startling rapidity.

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Taxonomy

• Water
• Technology
• Water Resources
• Efficiency Improvement
• Building Materials
• Building Design
• Green Buildings
• Energy Efficiency
• Green Technology
• Water Purification
• Green Building