The Vertical Gardens in Bangkok made headlines all over the world.
And it’s easy to understand. In a world made out of concrete, these living walls just add something to our environment that s a lot more natural for us. It enhances the air quality and turns the modern world into a better habitat for us and our kids.
This is an example of indoor walls – but vertical gardens also work for outdoor walls. In fact, it’s not even necessary to have soil – sometimes all that is needed is a good water supply.
It was Patrick Blanc who pioneered this idea. He saw plants in the wild – plants that grew vertically without any soil. And he got the idea if this would work in our urban environments too.
On average, a vertical wall weights less than 30kg per square meter. That means: pretty much any kind of wall can easily support it.
The vertical gardens in Bangkok at the Siam Paragon shopping mall are used for decorative purposes, and to enhance air quality. However, vertical gardens can also be used to grow food crops, and thus supply nourishment for people.
Sometimes, it is also referred to as organic architecture.
It’s easy to include a visit to the Siam Paragon in a Bangkok sightseeing trip and enjoy the living walls there.
Another place in Bangkok was the Emporium. Do you know these looong elevator tubes that lead all the way up a shopping mall – that are in plain sight. Well, instead of just making it from glass, or a normal wall, at the Emporium they grew plants around it, and not it looks almost like a huge tree that has plants grown around it. Which is very befitting, especially if you consider that not too long ago, Bangkok was a wilderness 🙂