Review - Book- Vertical Gardens
- Published: 06 December 2007 15:04
- Author: Ruth Slavid
- More by this Author
- Last Updated: 06 December 2007 15:04
- Reader Responses
The ACROS building in Fukuoka, Japan - a 15 storey cultural and exhibition centre
Britain simply doesn't do much vertical gardening, Ruth Slavid discovers
Vertical Gardens: Bringing the City to Life. By Anna Lambertini and Jacques Leenhardt. Thames & Hudson, 2007. 240pp. £39.95
The children's centre at Paradise Park in north London, designed by DSDHA with landscape architect Marie Clark, is the last project in Vertical Gardens: Bringing the City to Life, and receives some of the most perfunctory coverage. It is also the only British project featured.
This is not merely due to the fact that the authors are based, respectively, in Florence and Paris. Compared to other European countries, we just don't do much of this stuff. The clue may lie in the special circumstances of the Paradise Park building. Its 'living wall' was designed, in part, to compensate for the fact that the building was replacing an area of parkland. With our relatively low-density cities, the UK is rich in parks. Perhaps we just don't need to do it – at least until we get serious about embracing higher densities. What is fascinating about many of these projects is seeing to what extent architects are willing to cede control and allow the plants to grow in unexpected directions, rampage or die. The trouble with plants is that they're far less easy to subjugate than steel or concrete.
Good management involves adapting to the behaviour of plants, rather than trying to impose order on them. Herzog & de Meuron, at its Prada Aoyama Epicenter in Tokyo, chooses to cover the boundary of its site with moss, which is constrained and consequently rather unrewarding. Jean Nouvel, in contrast, lets it all hang out in his exemplary collaborations with Patrick Blanc at the Cartier Foundation and the Quai Branly museum in Paris – Blanc is pretty much the star of this book.
The projects are a visual feast, particularly on a grim winter's day. Only Jeff Koons' hideous dog and a nearly unreadable introduction let the book down.
Resume: Nice gardens. Anyone for vertical croquet?
