Vertical Gardens

Bringing nature into urban spaces is one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century. Perhaps the most spectacular solution to this problem is the vertical garden: more than just a decorative trend, these gardens are a means of bringing greenery into metropolitan areas. Vertical Gardens is the first publication to present a collection of the most important examples of this unique addition to the international architectural vocabulary, illustrated through hundreds of photographs. Architects using ingenious framing systems are able to create compositions of plant life and adapt them to diverse settings which include luxury hotels, office buildings, museums, and parking garages. The book is organized by theme and reviews early experiments conducted by artists like Hundertwasser and Vito Acconci, advances in name of 'green over the gray' proposed by Emilio Ambasz, and extraordinary sprouting buildings by Patrick Blanc, Edouard François, and Terunobu Fujimori. All of the projects included combine man-made materials, recent technologies, and diverse types of vegetation to conquer the vertical dimension.