In Paris’s 17th arrondissement is a 10-story apartment building that’s so completely covered with potted plants that the building itself is invisible. Each flower pot is dense with foliage from rapidly growing bamboo plants. With 380 such irregularly spaced flower pots lining the balconies on three sides of the building, the entire apartment block appears to be a giant display of potted plants.
The building called “Flower Tower” was designed by Edouard François, who drew inspiration from Parisians who habitually cultivate even the most tiniest balcony, nurturing surprising greenery in this tightly packed, densely occupied city.
(via The Flower Tower of Paris | Amusing Planet)
China also Is Building a Vertical Forest to Fight Pollution
China is out to build a fleet of the most nature-incorporated architectural structures in the world. After a never-ending series of record-breaking glass bridges—and even a glass bathroom—construction has begun on Asia’s first vertical forest in Nanjing.
The greenery, which will cover a 6,000-square-meter area, is expected to absorb 25 tons of carbon dioxide each year while producing 130 pounds (60 kilograms) of oxygen each day.
The architects behind the project are the same that designed the vertical forests in Milan, Italy and Lausanne, Switzerland. The architecture firm, Stefano Boeri, has designed several other eco-friendly and green projects around the world, including a “mountain forest hotel” in China and “urban tree lounge” in Italy.
Capitalism greening the city this way is not the only vision of the future..
In urban farming, Havana and Montreal are the models to follow
In Montreal, Canada, urban agriculture is officially part of the city’s sustainable development plans. 95 community gardens already provide 26 hectares of land for 12,000 gardeners and another 70 smaller collective gardens are maintained by the city, community organizations and tenants associations.
With just those 26 hectares, given the city’s calculation that 2 people could be fed all the fresh vegetables they need for 6 months of the year with an 18 square meter plot of land, nearly 29,000 people could already be swearing off imported supermarket veggie purchases for half the year. That’s a far cry from feeding the 2 million+ citizens of this city for the whole year, but its a great start.
Agriculture has played an enormous role in Cuba’s history. Yet, today, it is only 5% of the GDP with a possibility for expansion.1
The participation of small independent farmers working for the government has become a dominant factor in the Cuban model of agriculture. In the agricultural sector, there are some 575,000 farmers who own or lease their private plots, working individually or in service cooperatives, many of whom are prospering from the rise of market-driven agricultural markets
After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Cuban trade fell 73%; the economy was in tatters.5 Necessity being the Mother of Invention, sustainable agriculture took root: organic farming, urban gardens, smaller farms, animal traction and biological pest control. All these became part of the new Cuban agriculture.
