Dark Roasted Blend has a big round-up of trippy architectural visions of future cities. Here are some highlights:
Luc Schuiten’s Vegetal City
The Walking City by Archigram, an old favorite of mine.
‘Shroom City, by Frederic St. Arnaud
There are many more at Dark Roasted Blend: Hallucinatory Architecture of the Future
(Thanks Trevor!)
The federal government plans to plant its own bold garden directly above a downtown plaza. As part of a $133 million renovation, the General Services Administration is planning to cultivate “vegetated fins” that will grow more than 200 feet high on the western facade of the main federal building here, a vertical garden that changes with the seasons and nurtures plants that yield energy savings.
“They will bloom in the spring and summer when you want the shade, and then they will go away in the winter when you want to let the light in,” said Bob Peck, commissioner of public buildings for the G.S.A. “Don’t ask me how you get them irrigated.”
Rainwater, captured on the roof, and perhaps even “gray water” recycled from the interior plumbing are both possibilities, the architects say. But they concede that they are still figuring out some of the finer points of renovating the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, which was completed in 1975 and is currently 18 stories of concrete, glass and minimal inspiration.
New York Times: In Portland, Going Green and Growing Vertical in a Bid for Energy Savings
(Thanks Bill!)
A bus stop that grows its own foliage as shade? A children’s playground, made entirely from trees? A shelter made from living tree roots that could provide natural protection against earthquakes in California?
“Eco-architecture” may sound like a Buck Rogers vision of an ecologically-sustainable future, but that future is now thanks to the guidance of Tel Aviv University Professors Yoav Waisel and Amram Eshel. The concept of shaping living trees into useful objects ???? known as tree shaping, arborsculpture, living art or pooktre isn’t new. But scientists are now ready to use this concept as the foundation of a new company that will roll out these structures worldwide.
(via OVO)
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