Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Botanical Architecture

Looking like a koi pond, this is actually one of the upper windows in...


the Atheneum Hotel vertical wall as glimpsed from the Number 19 London bus.  Designed by Patrick Blanc, and finished in 2009, he is the inventor of the mur vegetal, or garden wall.




A true traffic-stopper, the garden is a bit of jungle in what otherwise seems a sea of concrete on a hot summer's day.


Blanc is the botanist and designer behind over 140 such walls throughout the world.  Since 1994 he has  become the world expert in adapting plants appropriate to the native climate and enabling them to flourish in a base of wooden slats and felt.



1 comment:

Sean Bentley said...

Very cool - unless you happen to be afflicted with vertigo!