Eric Futerfas Submission for the 2020 UC Berkeley Stephen Lenci Award
Can issues of culture, climate, and space be addressed by retrofitting vegetation into an urban environment without compromising any existing context? This is the question that I am attempting to address with my Masters of Science in Architecture thesis research as a student in the Building Science program. At its core, it demands a profound cooperation between the disciplines of architecture and landscape architecture in order to forge a radical synthesis of their forms and functions. In tandem with this task, I am also attempting to interrogate what this really means in the contemporary context of an impending ecocide and how the disciplines can converge to implement the dramatic changes necessary to thwart such a dire fate. To better understand this prospective path forward, it becomes necessary to examine how we arrived at our current moment. I begin my research with a brief investigation into the history of the relationship between civilization and nature, and how we came to understand these as discrete things; concepts whose divergence has been recursively reinforced through generations of inherited conceptual frameworks established to justify the agency of mankind in our conquest over the landscape and mastery of its extracted matter. For a member of the Building Science group, I cannot help but find myself in a slightly awkward position considering how much research effort is spent perpetrating this conceptual wedge between ourselves and the environment. It should be questioned if optimizing how comfortably removed we can make occupants feel from the exterior is not coddling them into a false sense of security. Of course though, the intention to reduce our energy consumption is a noble and necessary one, but I suspect that there is perhaps a more upstream diagnosis to our society’s antagonistic and unsustainable physical relationship with the environment. The answer, as this submission explores, may lay behind unpacking and remediating the psychological divorce that we’ve made some time ago and exacerbated since. However, the relationship between the psychological and physical experience is as inextricably bound as perhaps it should be between the practices of architecture and landscape architecture. The conveyance of such a message must be spatially deployed onto a stage where it not only demonstrates itself as an integral whole, but proves itself as an asset to society. It is not enough to perpetuate the environmental trend of kitsch homages to the natural world through superficial expressions of bio-emulation. Our built environment must transcend this default mode of pandering and strive for a more materially-minded functional compliment if we are to take ourselves and our existence on spaceship earth seriously. Despite the dire circumstances, I hope to project a potent dose of optimism into the discourse with a radical remedy that can potentially address a peculiar but pervasive condition of our capriciously constructed world. It comes in the form of a benevolent parasite which is both and neither architecture/ landscape; defying definition as much as it defies gravity, seeking to proliferate itself through the urban fabric to retrofit public spaces at the service of reassimilating vegetation, the ubiquity of a nearly forgotten but precious past whose feeble remains may finally be met with reinforcements.
“A truly ecological architecture, one that is both energy - and material - saving and promotes human interrogation with nature as a whole, can be regarded as one of the great tasks of the future.� - Frei Otto 1999
ABSTRACT Over the last century, architecture has become progressively more effective at physically quarantining us from our external environment, abetted by a rapid advancement of technology.1 This is an understandably necessary endeavor, as the natural world is fraught with hazardous conditions and creatures that threaten our health and challenge our functions, but in the march toward total interior comfort control, architecture has, perhaps unintentionally, psychologically relegated us from nature as well, recurrently neglecting our instinctual attraction to the dynamic forms and sensations of the natural world in which we are still rooted on a very primal, phenomenological level.
For some time now, architects have made significant efforts to appeal our latent sensibilities of natural forms and features. Notably, Alvar Aalto incorporated many natural materials, shapes, and sights into his designs. The Metabolists of post-war Japan adopted and expanded Aalto’s philosophy to entail a more ephemeral and versatile architecture and urbanism that anticipated and embraced what they correctly recognized as a dynamic environment in constant fluctuation between degeneration and regeneration. This was in no uncertain terms a dramatic response to the atomic atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki whose happenings will be forever seared into the consciousness of humankind as a grim example of the destructive capacities of our technology.
credit: Carlo Fumarola
credit: Earnst Haeckel
Within the scope of our evolutionary timeline, it was not long ago when humans were immersed in nature, subjected to its elements and dependent on its resources, a humble and vulnerable position from which a respectful relationship was forged.2 Today though, our residual evolutionary struggle to overcome the obstacles within nature has encouraged an arrogant and capricious wielding of newfound power, deploying technology in ways that presumably inverted the power dynamic. Nature appeared to be at our mercy, until we discovered the damage whose consequences we are only just beginning to reconcile with. By the words of the Japanese Metabolist Architect Noboru Kawazoe, “We have disturbed the order of Nature and Nature has retaliated.�3
It is widely recognized today that architecture cannot continue to merely emulate nature and pander to biophilic sensibilities. In the face of an impending ecocide, the built environment must make some difficult material leaps in order to arrive at an equilibrium with the environment. As the human population expands, cities will be required to densify to keep up with the demand for reasonably comfortable human habitation if we intend to simultaneously curtail our footprint on the planet.4 Urban densification is an easy and obvious solution to this, but its inherent consequences should not go ignored. Densification can result in oppressive physical conditions like crowding5 and concentrated air pollution which can directly translate to debilitating psychological conditions such as stress, anxiety, and depression.6 Aside from the known by-products of our prevalent generation of transportation, a considerable contributor to air pollution and the demand for oxygen is the construction industry itself.7
hare of global energy-related CO2 emissions by sector, 2015
Transport 22% Other 9%
Residential (direct) 6%
Buildings 28%
Residential (indirect) 11% Other industry 30%
Non-residential (direct)… Non-residential (indirect)…
Construction industry 11%
credit: UN International Energy Agency
n industry” is an estimate of the portion of the overall industry sector that applies to the manufacturing of materials for building construction, such as steel,
New construction often entails the clearing of undeveloped, vegetated land to make way for buildings and infrastructure while consuming and construction account for more pollutants. than 35% of global energy energy and expelling This final creates early 40% of energy-related CO2 emissions. accommodations for more people, increasing the demand for oxygen while paradoxically destroying the operative technology that produces it, tilting the balance of the oxygen and carbon supplies into a progressively exacerbated ratio as photosynthetic processes can no longer keep up with human civilization, especially in densified population centers like those presented by many contemporary cities. With the unsustainable amount of carbon already in the atmosphere and inertia of climate change, it becomes imperative that the short and long term environmental consequences of construction for urban densification be offset by something in an effort to balance the energy exchanges between the reciprocal kingdoms of plants and animals.
A (2017), World Energy Statistics and Balances, IEA/OECD, Paris, www.iea.org/statistics
credit: Sergey Semenov
Organic green matter that once flourished on the same plots of earth that we have converted into cities is now only conditionally allowed into our domain where only the most aesthetically appealing species are quarantined to relatively small planters or pots in a feeble attempt to establish some degree of coexistence. Because of contemporary architecture and urbanism practices, escaping to nature requires an active effort for dense city residents, taking a trip away from the familiar realm of concrete, masonry, and glass into a bureaucratically designated boundary
for the preservation of what was previously ubiquitous. The popularity of places like these such as state parks hints at the subconscious yet profound longing for the return of nature in order to make a return to nature less compulsory.8 Considering the disturbing rate at which we appear to be negatively terraforming our collective home, a proper response will have to be comparably radical to the urgency of the issue. Luckily, the field of architecture happens to be in an extremely prominent position in society for addressing the climate crisis because of its role as the arbiter between people and their environment. Architecture is situated in a precarious feedback loop, both shaping and being shaped by our values, in constant flux with civilization, and proposing a form of architecture that exhibits a means of reconciliation with nature and landscape has the potential to interject another possible remedy into the discourse. For this project, it entails a radical reintroduction and integration of vegetation into our cities so that nature can begin to reclaim the land from which it was erased, re-asserting itself in a bold, yet benevolent manner. The agenda of this task demands that we repurpose our technology from the function of strengthening the definition between built and natural environments to that of dissolving that definition and bringing them into a synthesized harmony. This could promote a positive feedback loop where plants can reciprocate people’s care by providing both physical and mental health benefits, reviving a sense of environmental respect and responsibility that is desperately needed to mobilize a generation of planetary stewards in the era of impending climate catastrophe. Kawazoe succinctly asserts that “Cities should coexist with the dramatic features of Nature,” but at this stage along in civilized development, we must work backwards and find a way for nature to coexist with the dramatic features of the city.
credit: Ludwig Ferdinand
BACKGROUND The integration of vegetation into architecture has abundant historical precedent. In the sixth century BC, the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II, ordered the construction of one of the fabled seven wonders of the ancient world: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. They served to console his wife, Amitis, as she dearly missed the landscape and flowers of her home country. The garden is said to have been comprised of several exotic (non-native) species, reflecting a considerable understanding of horticulture.9
credit: Wikipedia
This uprooting of plants can be viewed as an early sign of human control over nature, and it is this position of control that we would come to later abuse through insatiable extraction and processing, taking the natural bounties of our planet for granted as our infinite plunder. Gardeners have long used what we would know today as trellises and pergolas to support vines and other climbing plants for the growth of grapes for wine production. In the 15th century, the function of pergolas evolved in the garden of Versailles to include the role of generating shade for walkways, evolving in function from one of pure subservience to the vines to one that also fulfils some spatial utility to people. During this time, the verticality of gardens depended exclusively on our ability to understand and redirect the inherent growth patterns of plants. Later, containers or “pots” became utilized to freely place and suspend plants, necessitating designs of more elaborate irrigation arrangements. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 19th century that the
architect Hector Horeau addressed this issue during the height of metal architecture, where structures became significantly lighter and more transparent. In a project to cover a boulevard in Paris, Hector arranged potted plants in an array so that water would cascade to the next tier of plants. He also meticulously designed a rainwater collection system capable of distributing water per the needs of each specific species of plant.10 The Industrial Revolution that enabled the design of lightweight structures such as Hector’s propelled the growth of the urban environment from the late 18th century onward. The creation of the railroad enabled a significant migration of rural workers into urban cities, looking for newly available manufacturing jobs. This new era of prosperity was also followed by a predictable expansion of the human population, particularly in cities. Before this period, however, the ecological footprint of human settlements and activity was limited because cities were relatively small and few in number, so they were embedded bio-regionally where most of their immediate surroundings were provisional enough.11 With new technologies and brute force energy supplies like fossil fuels, the Industrial Revolution gave humans unprecedented authority over nature, enabling people to override and ignore nature’s forces. Human facilities became sealed from natural energy flows with mass-produced materials as architects sacrificed connection to the landscape at the behest of prioritizing interior layout efficiencies to host an explosion of workers. In the process, a subconscious but substantial disconnect from the natural realm was facilitated. Our buildings became machines for living, but there was not much about them that was alive,12 as living things would much more readily recognize and react to the systems that they are constituents of. This acceleration of technology and material defining our constructed environment and conception of ourselves was met with a healthy but peculiar form of skepticism by a rising tide of environmentalists like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and George Perkins Marsh in the second half of the 19th century. Indebted to
Enlightenment and Romantic philosophers like Jean Jaques Rousseau and William Worsworth, respectively. This wave of environmentalism celebrated a spiritual belief of the benefits from immersion in a nature unspoiled by the burgeoning industrialization that came to characterize so many American cities. This marked a radical fork in American thinking about landscape, as the industrial revolution perpetrated such an antagonistic Judeo-Christian perspective about the right and responsibility of humankind to “cultivate the wilderness.”13 Although this early environmentalist movement advanced ethical notions about nature and landscape, is was still predicated on the notion of a “wilderness,” which nonetheless operates on a fundamental distinction between people and environment as disparate entities.
of both, but what it did instead was create a logistically impractical condition where people were dislocated from the city while causing the destruction of the environment for the purposes of new developments that prioritized privacy over ecology.15 This phenomenon of urban sprawl has become a notorious example of poorly considered urbanism, and its failure is best used as a reminder of the potential consequences of not holistically considering the implications of a romanticized urban approach.
This movement also resurrected the concept of the sublime from Romanticism which came to represent an emotional quality of pleasure and awe derived from intellectually surrendering to the incomprehensible complexity found in nature. This was a particularly potent notion when nature manifested as a threat to human habitation,14 such as when neglected or poorly designed buildings would become overgrown and reclaimed by vegetation. credit: Wikipedia
The 20th century saw the innovation of several smaller-scale innovations that work toward the goal of merging building and landscape. In 1938, Stanley Hart White, then professor of urbanism at the University of Illinois, filed a patent for his “Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System” which marked the formal invention of the green wall, allowing plants to be arranged perpendicular to gravity. This had enormous influence on design thinking for a certain progeny of architects and landscape architects. studies in the history of gardens an credit: National Geographic
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British and North American city planners leveraged our newfound confidence in construction with concepts of environmentalism and the sublime to address issues with industrial growth of cities through the Garden City movement. The movement advocated for a strategy of urban sprawl, essentially bringing the city to nature, aiming to synthesize the advantages credit: National Geographic
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More recently, the French botanist Patrick Blanc innovated on White’s concept when he observed plants in a rainforest growing off of rocks and other trees, leading to the conclusion that a substrate is technically unnecessary so long as nutrients are delivered to the roots. Following this, Blanc made a patent for the “Green Wall” in 1988, featuring a hydroponic network. This system opened huge potential for the reintroduction of plants into our urban environments, especially with the reduced load requirements without a substrate.16 The psychological benefits of living among natural features such as vegetation have been theorized to have a deep relationship to human evolution. Erich Fromm was the first person to coin the term “Biophilia” for this innate attraction and described it as being attracted to all that is alive and vital.17 The theory has been articulated for quite some time, however. Henry David Thoreau eloquently wrote about our affinity for nature in his book Walden, especially in the second chapter “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” where he explains the practical and aesthetic reasons he chose to live in the woods.18 Those “aesthetic” reasons, of course however, turn out to also be practical ones within the theory of biophilia. Edward O. Wilson published his book Biophilia in 1984, in which he expressed that our subconscious attraction to nature and natural forms is actually an advantageous evolutionary instinct that we developed because it encourages us to value other forms of life as potential life-enhancing resources.19 These explicit physical and implicit psychological benefits are the basis for which a strategy of urban ecology can be justified, even outside of the context of climate change.
Bio-manipulations have profound precedent at larger scales as well. The state of Meghalaya in India is home to several “living root bridges” which are the result of inoculating and knotting living rubber tree roots from either side of a river over time in order to span the distance. The earliest known mention of these bridges is in 1844 when they were written about in the Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, but it’s unknown exactly how old the tradition really is.21 These living pieces of infrastructure are a taste of the potential to manipulate our environment in a subservient way without the need to destroy or process it. Inspired by this, Dr. Ferdinand Ludwig of the Technical University of Munich has pioneered contemporary methods of vegetative integration with architecture. Dr. Ludgwig calls this practice “Baubotanik,” which translates from German to “Living Plant Constructions.” The practice is forging a new paradigm of cooperation between architecture and plants by the consideration of living, growing plants as a building material rather than a simple ornamental application. It involves the planning of architecture in accordance with the future growth of plants so that they can fuse into a living and technical compound structure. It often involves heavy amounts of initial vegetative manipulation, sometimes involving the grafting of hundreds of small trees together to create a massive, singular organism that can grow together to consume, strengthen, and compliment architecture.22 This very recent research has opened the door to new potentials of sublime, biophilic harmony between architecture and landscape, a trend in eco-design whose success will hopefully be iterated on by this project.
A biophilic strategy to merge buildings with landscape implies, among other things, the understanding of vegetative growth in order to not just accommodate it, but harness it. This practice of control has strong ties to the art of bonsai, the ancient Chinese practice of growing small trees into designed shapes. This art form entails botanical understandings of nutrient flows in plants in order to know how to probe them to encourage or discourage certain behaviors of growth.20 credit: Arch Daily
1. Samiei, Kaveh. “Architecture and Urban Ecosystems: From Segregation to Integration.” The Nature of Cities. N.p., 18 Sept. 2016. Web. 27 Mar. 2017. 2. Bergman, David. “The Future of Sustainable Design.” Sustainable Design: A Critical Guide. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2012. 127-35. Print. 3. Noboru, Kawazoe. “”Metabolism” Manifesto. Material and Man Essay.” Project Japan: Metabolism Talks... By Rem Koolhaas, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Kayoko Ota, and James Westcott. Köln: Taschen, 2011. 215. Print. <https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2013/05/26/architecture-and-urban-ecosystems-fromsegregation-to-integration/> 4. Booth, Alan. Urban Crowding and Its Consequences. New York: Praeger, 1976. Print. Praeger Special Studies in U.S. Economic, Social, and Political Issues. 5. Clark, Greg, Senior Fellow, ULI Europe, and Dr. Tim Moonen, Director of Intelligence at The Business of Cities Ltd. The Density Dividend: Solutions for Growing and Shrinking Cities. Rep. London: Urban Land Institute, 2015. Print. 6. Yeh, Anthony G. O. “High-Density Living In Hong Kong.” LSE Cities. N.p., Nov. 2011. Web. 28 Mar. 2017. <https://lsecities.net/media/objects/articles/high-density-living-in-hong-kong/en-gb/>. 7. IEA (2019), “Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction 2019”, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/ reports/global-status-report-for-buildings-and-construction-2019 8. Rainer, Thomas, and Claudia West. “Chapter 1: Nature as It Was. Nature as It Could Be.” Planting in a Post-wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes. Portland, OR: Timber, 2016. N. pag. Print. 9. Dalley, Stephanie. “Ancient Mesopotamian Gardens and the Identification of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Resolved.” Garden History, vol. 21, no. 1, 1993, pp. 1–13. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ stable/1587050. Accessed 18 Mar. 2020. 10. Broto, Carles, and Jacobo Krauel. Vertical Gardens: Design Guide & 42 Case Studies. Barcelona: LINKS, 2016. 6-26. Print. 11. Kluger, Jeffrey. “Earth at the Tipping Point: Global Warming Heats Up.” TIME. N.p., 26 Mar. 2006. Web. 3 Mar. 2017. <http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1176980,00.html>. 12. Braungart, Michael, and William McDonough. Cradle to Cradle. Vintage, 2009. Print. 13. Sanders, Joel. “Human/Nature: Wilderness and the Landscape/ Architecture Divide.” Groundwork, by Diana Balmori and Joel Sanders, Monacelli, 2011, pp. 12–33. 14. Brady, Emily. “Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.” The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature. Cambridge University Press / University of Natre Dame, 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 02 Apr. 2017. <http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/45825-the-sublime-in-modern-philosophy-aesthetics-ethics-andnature/>. 15. Edwards, A. Trystan. “A Further Criticism of the Garden City Movement.” The Town Planning Review, vol. 4, no. 4, 1914, pp. 312–318., <www.jstor.org/stable/40100071> 16. Blanc, Patrick, and VeÌronique Lalot. “The Impact of Plants on Architecture.” The Vertical Garden: From Nature to the City. New York: Norton, 2012. 74-83. Print. 17. Fromm, Erich. The Heart of the Man. N.p.: n.p., 1965. Print 18. Saunders, Judith P.. “Biophilia in Thoreau’s Walden.” South Atlantic Review. South Atlantic Modern Language Association. 2014. HighBeam Research. 2 Apr. 2017 <https://www.highbeam.com>. 19. Kellert, Stephen R., and Edward O. Wilson. “Chapter 2: The Biological Basis for Human Values of Nature.” The Biophilia Hypothesis. Washington, D.C.: Island, 1993. N. pag. Print. 20. Zhou’, Wu-Zhong, and Xiao-Bai Xu. “Penjing: The Chinese Art of Bonsai.” HortTechnology 150-154 3.2 (1993): 150-54. Web. 2 Apr. 2017. 21. Lewin, Brent (November 2012), “India’s living Bridges”, Reader’s Digest Australia, pp. 82–89, archived from the original on 2012-11-16 22. Oommen, Ansel. “Baubotanik: The Botanically Inspired Design System That Creates Living Buildings.” ArchDaily. N.p., 23 Oct. 2015. Web. 01 Apr. 2017. <http://www.archdaily.com/775884/baubotanik-thebotanically-inspired-design-system-that-creates-living-buildings>.
PROPOSAL OUTLINE Being subjected to crowding and pollution, dense urban environments pose a monumental challenge for designers to remedy, especially with projected increases in population density. San Francisco in particular is the city of most interest for this project for not just its proximity and ease of evaluation, but for its established inclination toward an agenda of biophilic design which has the potential to create more delightful and clean spaces when deployed on an urban scale. Despite the bureaucratic hurdles that exist in a city as progressive as SF that may prevent a literal implementation of whatever this thesis produces, the city’s fabric will still lend itself as a very useful, albeit speculative, testing ground for a radical approach to architecture and landscape urbanism that can be replicated elsewhere in the world. For purposes of extrapolating the project’s potential, it will operate with an optimistic understanding that constructs such as regulatory obstacles upheld today which might prevent such an intervention will be increasingly negotiable as demands for comprehensive climate action escalate with desperation. Not without attempting to be diplomatic, a number of liberties will be taken against assumptions of property rights, air rights, and other miscellaneous policy nuances that this project would in all likelihood violate. Another fundamental approach to this thesis is the understanding that population and construction density may have progressed to a point where new developments cannot necessarily provide sufficient opportunities to implement sustainable measures, assuming that we can wait for the currently constructed environment to run its course in material life cycles. Rather, this project asserts the necessity to more immediately retrofit our existing architecture and infrastructure, and so this project will seek out to discover what sort of measures may be materially possible. The research question follows: Can issues of culture, climate, and space be addressed by retrofitting vegetation into an urban environment without compromising any existing context?
credit: biophiliccities.org
In the spirit of being a founding partner city in the international Biophilic Cities Network, San Francisco adopted a “Better Streets Plan” in 2010 which published guidelines for designing hanging planters suspended from light posts. These guidelines warn that “because hanging baskets are resource and maintenance intensive, they are not a preferred landscaping method.” However, this project is operating on the assumption of extreme urban density where new building construction is out of the question and the ground condition in the pedestrian realm is fully occupied with existing landscape features, infrastructure, and clearances. This degree of density requires that a new territory be forged in the city for the purposes of hosting vegetation, and so a form of suspended vegetation becomes a likely option where perhaps no other exists. Conveniently, San Francisco also happens to have a very accommodating Mediterranean climate, making it a great candidate for hosting a diverse palette of possible plants to be installed.
credit: USDA
Ellis St
Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Farrell St
Geary St
credit: Hood Design Studio
edited from: OpenStreetMap
One of the areas within the city with the most potential for this project exists along the historic Powell Street between Hallidie Plaza and Union Square. After Ellis St along this trolley vector, a charitable array of tree canopies recede to expose pedestrians to the elements, releasing them to what would be an otherwise overwhelming amount of human artifice if it were not for Hood Design Studioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recent intervention along the following two blocks where this project is targeted. Along this vector, a series of contextual features are identified as points of potential interface, including (in descending priority): light poles fire escapes existing planters signage Another equally important consideration is the clearance for traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, as any auxiliary installation should do its best to avoid negatively impacting these functions, but rather compliment them to enhance their meaning.
Inspired by natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most successful retrofitting agents, a series of flexible cable net structures are generated between select contextual interface features, twisting through space to dodge existing infrastructure and clearances (in its optimal iteration) while opening up views to relieve the pedestrian experience of an incessant, claustrophobic canopy. The nets dance with each other and overlap to create more dynamic spatial configurations where they temporarily double the degree of street-level shade before they exchange roles. The acrobatics of this form also create a double curvature to reinforce the structure while simultaneously providing a dimension of verticality that makes the surfaces more preferrable to being consumed by climbing vines which use their gravitropic senses to grow vertically. As far as current architectural systems are concerned, tensile systems offer perhaps the most spatial flexibility with the least contextual disturbance, and so they make for an ideal candidate for deployment of a parasitic urban retrofit.
credit: Roads End Naturalist
Botanical Name
Common Name
Rubus idaeus
American Red Rasberry
Lonicera hispidula
Hairy Honeysuckle
Aristolochia californica
Dutchman's Pipe
Vitis californica
Wild Grape
Calystegia macrostegia
Pink Island Morning Glory
Clematis lasiantha
Chaparral Clematis
Marah fabacea
Wild Cucumber
Parthenocissus inserta
Virginia Creeper
Lonicera ciliosa
Orange Honeysuckle
Marah watsonii
Taw Man-root
Clematis ligusticifolia
Virgin's Bower
Early Spring
Late Spring
Early Summer
Edible Honey
Edible Honey
Edible Fruits
Edible Fruits
Late Summer
Early Fall
Mature Height
Growth Rate
Sun Req.
Water Req.
Edible Berries
Edible Berries
5-9
Moderate
Part Shade
Moderate
Berries
Berries
4-8
Rapid
Part Shade
Low
1-20
Moderate
Part Shade
Moderate
20-40
Rapid
Part Shade - Full Sun
Low
15-20
Rapid
Part Shade - Full Sun
Low
15
Rapid
Full Shade - Full Sun
Very Low Very Low
Whiskers Spikey Fruits
Whiskers
Late Fall
Whiskers
Early Winter
Whiskers
Late Winter
Whiskers
Spikey Fruits
18
Inedible Berries
Wiskers
Wiskers
The surfaces of these cable nets are then evaluated for sun exposure, from where they can be programmed with different species of native climbing vines whose sun demands correspond with their position across the netsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; exposure gradient. Accounting for projected live loads of growing botanical mass, spacing of the plants will need to also be coordinated to provide as much projected coverage at maturity as possible.
Wiskers
Wiskers
Wiskers
Rapid
Full Sun
65-98
Rapid
Part Shade - Full Sun
Low
10-20
Moderate
Part Shade
Very Low
20
Moderate
Full Shade - Full Sun
Low
1-30
Moderate
Full Shade - Part Shade
Low
Seasonal Interest Spreadsheet foliage color flower color special feature
berries
Rather than reinforcing themselves with extra tissues for self-support like most vascular plants, vines secure to their surroundings so that they can redirect their metabolic energy towards producing more foliage, synchronizing with the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s goal of creating an urban canopy to address issues of space. This intimate fusion between built and organic features also serves to impart an essential lesson to its audience: that civilization can make positive interventions with nature if we understand how to properly probe it. These many reasons makes vines an ideal plant for this project. credit: Jacobs Rope Systems
The hanging baskets that the city’s “Better Streets Plan” warned about now become the subject of focus as much of the material potential of this intervention hinges on their function to properly sustain the plants. This focus will not only bring the project down to a more testable scale for further experimentation and optimization, but it also possesses an enormous opportunity to innovate on the interface between plants and structures on a more intimate level. Simultaneously, the prospective tectonics entailed at this special moment can be extrapolated to a multitude of situations where remotely sustaining vegetation becomes desirable, and so it becomes a matter of significance for projects beyond the specific installation proposal over Powell St. At the heart of these basket modules will be a very unique feature that can only be developed with the technology and expertise at UC Berkeley. Inspired by the ultra-efficiency of ancient Chinese irrigation technology, the precedent of the “Olla” or pourous capsule is reinterpreted through a computational lens. These vessels harbor water with soluble fertilizer whose release is passively negotiated by the micro pores inherent in their terra cotta walls, commanded by the exact water demands of the plants. This is enabled by a precise pore size, small enough to prevent water from excessively seeping through but large enough for negative hydraulic pressure on the outside to osmotically drag it through, acting as a extension of the plants’ capillary syphon effect that they achieve through evapotranspiration.
credit: gardensall.com
credit: Rebecca Jay, courtesy of 2214
Furthermore, the prospect of 3D-printing these porous capsules enables the accuracy and flexibility necessary to produce something that is computationally form-found by the parameters of: 1. maximizing surface area for root contact 2. minimizing internal volume to reduce water weight 3. resisting pressure from root girdling for durability The resulting module, if successful, will represent a novel advancement in interfacing with botanical growth without a substrate. Ideally, if implemented into a proposal such as that above the Powell Promenade, perhaps our cultural distinctions between the practices of architecture and landscape, and therefor ourselves and our environment, may finally see the dissolution needed to encourage more robust measures toward climate resilience.
concept sketch