Patrick Blanc's Green "Vegetal Walls"

If you think there's nothing new under the sun in the world of architectural design, chances are you haven't seen Patrick Blanc's vegetal walls. These walls are individually designed works of art featuring plants specially selected for the climate and environment (indoor or outdoor) of the wall in question. The plants are grown with an automated hydroponic, system for irrigation and nutrients, which allows for a light weight structure and the possibility of very large walls. The results are beautiful and diverse, ranging from veritable indoor jungles, to huge green murals, to minimal fairy-like moss-scapes. Besides creating visual appeal, vegetal walls improve local air quality by filtering carbon dioxide and certain toxins. They also improve the insulation capacity of the building, conserving heat in cool weather and releasing it in the heat. Most of all, these living walls create a sense of space that's entirely unique, blending indoor with outdoor and urban with wild. They remind us that nature isn't something out there, but wherever we go, something intrinsically part of us and always right here.

Passive Houses: A New Solution to an Old Problem

A recent article in the New York times highlighted an interesting trend in green building. Passive houses, which have been gaining popularity in Europe for years, are beginning to come to the United States. These homes, built for extreme energy efficiency, utilize no more than a quarter of the heating energy required in older structures. In some cases, such as the house described in the article above, the power required is as little as one twentieth of the norm, or about the amount required to run a hairdryer. In addition, when energy needs are this low, it's relatively easy to go a step further and supply them with solar or other green power sources. Of course, the idea of using passive heating isn't new, and many of the features of passive houses would be familiar to green builders. These homes tend to have large south-facing windows to take advantage of sunlight, and extremely efficient insulation to keep heat generated by occupants and their appliances inside. There is an important new twist, however: a heat exchange system ventilates the house with fresh air, while transferring 80% of the heat from the exhaust air to the intake. This allows every other area of the building to be built tighter than ever before without becoming stuffy. In Germany, where this technology was pioneered, passive houses (and other buildings, including schools), are becoming quite popular, and they now cost only about five percent more to build. In the United States the movement is still in its infancy, but some designers, such as Nabih Tahan in the Bay Area, are already helping it to gain a foothold. Hopefully we will see many future developments in this field!