Vertical Landscapes: The only way is up for green cities

By Darren Quick

Demand for office and housing space in ever diminishing land space has led to taller and taller buildings reaching for the skies in cities around the world. This shortage of land in many cities has unfortunately also led to a scarcity of natural vegetation in urban settings. We’ve looked at several vertical-farming concepts - dedicated buildings that provide space to grow crops in city centers - but a new architectural system from Vertical Landscapes (VL) seeks to invite nature back into our cities on a broader scale. The architectural system transforms buildings into columns of vegetation to add a much needed touch of green, help clean the city air and possibly even produce small scale crops, all while retaining the building’s usual use for office or housing space.

Vertical Landscape’s Vertical Ecosystem Structure (VES) is a freestanding structure that takes the form of a critical architectural component, a load-bearing, shear, utility wall. When incorporated into a larger structure it will both absorb the building’s loads and create conditions for vegetation to prosper. The VES contains all the irrigation and drainage piping and mechanical systems required, which can be customized to meet the needs of different types of vegetation and allow plants to be micromanaged to provide the optimum growing environment.