London's green walls

It seems natural to do some more posts related to green infrastructure and the Olympics, after all, it is the Olympics! How about taking a look at some of the green walls in London that you could see if you're there right now. Let's start with the most recent addition:

-The one above can be viewed close to the Eurostar Terminal. The creators of the wall, Biotecture, are one of the go to firms in England.  

-The Athenaeum Hotel's green wall, eight stories tall, is a Patrick Blanc project. There were more dramatic pictures to choose from and you can have a look at the hotel's website, but this one I was drawn to from a technical point of view, as you can see the wall looks somewhat sparse up close. Most green walls have the plants really packed in, there is no "dead space" to play with. But as you can see having plant upon plant is not necessary to create something absolutely beautiful.

-This one is for the people. Near the Westfield Shopping Centre, this 2010 green wall is still going strong. Of note, check out the irrigation requirements. 3 Liters of water per square meter every two days, for comparison the top picture requires about 2 liters per square meter per day. 

-The London Westminster hotel, formerly the Mint Hotel, had their green wall installed in 2011. It's currently the tallest in London, snatching the title from the Athenaeum. And a lot bigger too, more than 10 times the size.

-No list would be complete without London's National Gallery living interpretation of Van Gogh's "A Wheatfield, with Cypresses".

There are plenty more around London, when you're not taking in the Games or sights (if you are there post Games), see how many you can find. 

More green infrastructure legislation in San Fran and Milwaukee

Fantastic news from San Francisco with new urban farming legislation in the works. A community gardening czar will be hired to, among other things, develop incentives for backyard or spin farming, help start up two new urban farms and audit city owned property (on the ground and rooftop) to figure out where more gardens can go.

-Milwaukee is switching from encouraging green incentives for stormwater management to requiring them. The city will work with everyone to add 1 million gallons of storage capacity each year via swales, porous pavement and of course, green roofs. 

-Back in April I talked about the rise in municipalities thwarting the attempts of home owners to turn their lawns to food producing gardens. Grist picks up the baton and profiles a few more recent front lawn battles. The article is a little doom and gloom, I left a comment to let others know about bright spots, like Somerville, Massachusetts as we talked about two weeks ago. 

The Great Green Wall begins to grow

Cleaning out the old bookmarks folder so I wanted to do a quick update post on Africa’s great green wall. Green infrastructure so big, it becomes green geoengineering. 

Two weeks ago Senegal put shovels in the ground, kilometer 1 of a 7,775 km long journey east. The green belt will be 15 km wide, hopefully slowing the powerful Sahara. No idea how long this will take to complete, but China is trying something about two thirds as long to fight back the Gobi desert and that should be done by 2050.  Quite stunningly the Chinese government estimates it could take 300 years to reclaim the lost land!

Green roofs and a green roof practitioner at the Olympics

With the Olympics kicking off in a few days, I wanted to highlight a couple of things.

In 2008 we saw green roofs take the pre-Olympic spotlight, now...in what I believe is a first, we see a green roof practitioner vying for gold.

A couple of years ago I did a radio program and was interviewed by a true green architect Donna Vakalis. At the time she was gunning (literally) for the Olympics. Over time she's become a true supporter of verticiel and we're a supporter of hers. Guess what? She made Team Canada! The women's modern pentathlon is being staged on the final day, August 12, but there's no reason you can't support her right now! Good luck, Donna!!!

Some GILA (green infrastructure and living architecture) reading.

For the most recent blog post to be "the website is done" creates a rush like you wouldn't imagine. It took a long time to finish. But we must move on, other great things are happening around the world, particularly in the green infrastructure world.

-An article in the journal Environmental Science and Technology was published last month detailing that green infrastructure could improve air quality in urban street canyons by up to 30%.

-And for you truly hardcore lovers of green roofs, a new ASTM International Standard, E2788, has recently been developed. It will help green roof professionals specify the size and weight of expanded shale, clay and slate for their projects.

-If you would like to work up to crunching specifications, like those written by ASTM and live in Toronto, the public library is always the place to go. One of the largest systems in North America, I often send people there to pick up books on green roofs, green walls, green infrastructure and living architecture. Their blog has turned into a GILA hub with posts about the best green roof and urban vertical farming books.

-Lastly for today is a report from the Conservation Law Foundation which details the environmental and health benefits of urban agriculture, and much more, for those living in the Greater Boston area.  Happy Reading!!!

verticiel has a new website!!!

It has taken some time. No, actually, a really loooooong time, but our new website is done.

Comments are welcome, what do you think?

Green roofs, a symbol of bad or good architecture + breathless in France over urban ag

A ton happening on the urban agriculture front around the world:

-Urban ag enthusiasts in Vermont have another week to voice their opinion on the recommendations made by Burlington's Urban Agriculture Task Force. A stone’s throw away, Somerville Massachusetts is encouraging its residents to grow by planting an urban garden at its city hall. 

-In France, they are just beginning to investigate this thing called “urban agriculture” and the author of this article seems amazed by it all. It made me chuckle at first, but when I step back for a moment and think about it, it is pretty amazing. Maybe 10 years ago the nutty neighbors were the ones growing vegetables, these days its less and less likely that your neighbors would label you so and in places where urban gardens were slashed and burned, they are now less often targeted.  

-How a week can change things! Green roofs on this New York City building go from being possibly good to very bad when community groups take a look at some renderings. 

-Last month the National Resources Defense Council released a paper detailing how California could reduce its energy expenditure with green and white roofs. Sorry for not posting that sooner, it has been waiting in the queue! 

Aquaponics hits a new high when...

...in the comments section people debate if tilapia in your fish and chips order is worth your time and gloss over the fact that a 90,000 square foot non-profit facility, designed to teach youth and adults about urban agriculture, is being devised at this very moment in Lexington, Ky. In the same facility, you'll have a fish and chips shop, brewery, room for growing mushrooms, food kitchen, vermiculture demonstration on the roof and rooftop greenhouse.

-What's that you say, you want to know more about Hantz Farms in Detroit and the reasons why they should or shouldn't open a gigantic urban farm? Opponents want Hantz to be more like SOLEfood, and who knows, maybe the pressure will encourage them to consider making their enterprise more social.

-Get your pad and pencil out, for a huge rooftop space is available in the Bronx to farm on behalf of New York City.

New Jersey says "yes" to green roof incentives; Sydney says "maybe"

Some great green roof news in the last few days. We can now add New Jersey to the list of North American cities (soon to be) offering incentives for green roof installations. 

Sydney, Australia is also considering adopting various green roof and green wall incentives. Fun fact of the day, although just a city, Sydney has a population 1/2 the size of New Jersey in 1/900th of the space!

-In other green infrastructure news, Pittsburgh will be making a deep investment in their tree canopy. Hurray!!! 

-Last year I wondered what the hold up in Detroit was for the Hantz urban agriculture project. After years of waiting Hantz may finally get approval from the city, but this article describes some of the reasons for opposition to the farm. Does this seem familiar, Fort Lauderdale?

An aquaponics story

No matter how you slice it, this is a tremendous piece of journalism by Michael Timm. I am sure the owners of Sweet Water Organics will not like it, but the article gives us a sneak peak into the world of a developing company in a red-hot field. We all can learn a lot from this story.

July songs of the month

July is here...in Canada you had Canada Day, in the USA Independence Day. Here are the songs of the month for both countries during their week of celebrations.

A-Ha - Non-stop July 

Nirvana - Lake of Fire 

Dixie Chicks - Cold Day In July  

Shel Silverstein - June 25 at the Fourth of July 


And naturally, there will be a special blog post for Mexico in September. Smart move to celebrate your big day a few months, not a few days, before or after your neighbor. 

Step right up and get your own Highline

Every city wants a Highline...and that makes a lot of sense. Take derelict train tracks, add $172 million dollars and out pops over $2 billion dollars in private investment. What’s not to like? An architect who helped bring big community dreams to life says who the real winners are. By the way, if you think that your city should have its own Highline, Open Spaces Sacred Places wouldn’t be a bad place to start looking for money.

-A program in Minnesota encouraging kids to learn where their food comes from has expanded to over 145 school districts; in five years they have increased participation five fold. 

-I blogged about the NY Times love of bees last week, perhaps a little jealous another Big Apple rag jumps in to explain how the city may have reached their bee capacity.