Garden space is hard to come by in dense urban places, so enterprising urban gardeners have to get creative. Formwerkz, a Singapore-based architecture firm, was asked by one of their clients to design a home that maximized the garden space on their 300 sq meter lot. The resulting house includes a vertical living wall and green roof that is not only beautiful and functional, but also serves to improve the building’s performance.
Most homes on urban lots maximize their square footage at the expense of green space, leaving only a small strip of grass or a deck. For those who want to garden in a dense urban environment, space must be found or created. The Maximum Garden House is a wonderful example of how vertical walls and roofs can be repurposed as growing spaces. A boundary wall was designed not only to protect the house, but is also a vertical planter with lush draping plants facing the sidewalk and street.
The facade on the upper level is protected by a planting system that acts as a curtain wall. This vertical garden acts as a privacy, rain and shade screen, which improves the building’s energy performance. A green roof then covers the carport and is planted in an artistic pattern which can be easily seen from the upper floors. Staggered floors lead eventually up to the roof deck and garden, where one side slopes up and mimics natural terrain. For a such a small home site, four distinct garden areas were created in order to redress the imbalance of building vs. nature in an urban setting.
+ Formwerkz
Via DesignMilk
Photo credits: ©Jeremy San
Wow this design is gorgeous! I want this house…
It’s amazing what can be accomplished when one person breaks the ‘thought barrier.’ This design is proof of that. We sure owe Patrick Blanc a debt of gratitude. I can’t wait to see how this trend develops in the next few years. I wrote an article on how to build your own green wall @ http://www.landscapeandgardentoday.com/How_To/BuildVerticalGarden.php in case you want to try your hand at this. I’m working on mine today.
[...] for a spritz of water once a week – you can keep those hands free from the rougher perils of gardening, saving them for more enterprising summer [...]