playgrounds

where are swedish playgrounds so fun? why are Singaporean playgrounds so afraid of kids breaking their necks?

Toward’s Paradise

Designed by Gustafson Porter and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, a landscape installation titled “Towards Paradise” for the Venice Biennale.

how to build a green wall or green roof

i have been very curious about the currently ubiquitous green walls and i stumbled upon this article at archrecord. ok now there are even more reasons for us to be smelling the roses, and growing an urban farm. its really not just about aesthetics.

Musée du Quai Branly in Paris by Jean Nouvel is covered with over 150 species of plants

Basically for GREEN ROOFS there are two types. intensive (accomodate grass, shrubs, small trees, arbors and amenities) and extensive (just grass and smallish plants).

Shallow Assembly (extensive) Diagram 1 Growth media 2 Moisture retention mat 3 Drainage board 4 Protection fabric 5 Membrane (adhered) 6 Dens Deck 7 Approved insulation 8 Substrate

Deep Assembly (Intensive) Diagram 1 Growth media 2 Protection fabric 3 Drainage gravel 4 Protection fabric 5 Root barrier 6 Extruded polystyrene 7 Membrane (adhered) 8 DensDeck 9 Approved insulation 10 Substrate

you can have a hybrid of both types to cater to different parts of the building.

as for GREEN WALLS, the plants are usually held away from the wall to prevent them from damaging the structures.

there are two types of green wall, one of them is the ‘facade greening’ method which refers to the walls that are covered by climbers such as IVY that starts climbing from the ground. Ivy is a self-clinging climbing plant, and it will not damage the wall as long as there aren’t any surface vulnerabilities that the small roots can extend into. it is a pretty inexpensive. there are also twining climbers such as clematis and wisteria which will require additional support as seen on the picture below. steel-anchor and cable systems are taking the place of wooden trellises for this purpose.

metal screen with vines at Finnish Embassy in Washington, D.C.

the second type of green wall is the ‘living wall’ where planted are rooted in a growing medium attached to the wall. the example of the vancouver aquarium used a galvanised steel support structure anchored one inch away from a windowless wall, where no water proofing is needed over the high density concrete. G-SKY green wall panels were placed into the frame.

These 12-inch square polypropylene modules, 3–3/8 inches deep, had been preplanted in a nursery so that, unlike a green facade of climbing plants, this wall was completely green immediately after installation. In the future, individual modules can be easily removed and replaced if necessary.

the vertical garden is irrigated and nourished by an automated drip system fed from the ranwater collected from the roof top. the gravel bed serves to drain off any excess water.

they grew strawberries on the wall so children could eat from it. and the species planted are all selected because they grow in a native habitat with natural conditions similar to that of the aquarium building walls.

the brick accumulator

I came across this thread on pushpullbar, and I find it one of the most intriguing academic projects I’ve ever seen. The thing is, where I came from (NUS ARCHI), we are interested in serious building, and narratives and personal touch is almost always absent. I think UK projects do have a lot of that and that’s why they are so memorable, and you wonder why it isn’t built. Then again, probably because it doesn’t make any commercial sense. NUS works make tremendous commercial sense.

Basically, this project is by Nicholas Howett. It kinda is like a library of bricks collected from a disintegrating fort close to the site, sorted out by BOB (the Brick Organising Bot). And he included a very interesting narrative of a brick thief as well.

HERE IS HIS CRIT WRITE UP:

The Brick Accumulator.

The fort unruly, wayward, neglected for hundreds of years stands on the edge of the River Medway, incomplete from years of abuse, more recently teenagers have taken away bricks but the River Medway has always.

Wyllie a painter, his house Hoo lodge overlooks the Medway, he used bricks from the fort to repair his dining room. The fort is now distributed across the site, bricks strewn into the Medway, some removed by vandals, others by Wyllie. No one wishes to repair the fort, nor even hold it in a constant state, soon it will be no more.

Across a long bridge from the hill side you cross above the tree tops to reach the tower, inside the bricks from the fort are to be found collected and re-assembled as one again. Stored in conditions which replicate that of where they were found. The dark black bricks of the Medway emerged in water in a pool at the towers base, the better preserved bricks towards the top. The tower becomes the bricks new mortar.

Walkways cross the tower branching out from a staircase that transcends the tower allowing visitors to emerge themselves within the bricks. The staircase allows visitors to view the permanent collection on there way down.

The Permanent Collection.

Bricks, every type of brick imaginable will be kept here, archived by size, colour, shape, weight, condition and age. The will be stored in a shelf like location upon the walls of the tower, visitors after they have descended the tower can ask to see a brick and ‘the robot’ which organises and reorganises the collection will deliver one to the table at the base of the tower. Scurrying up the walls to find the brick removing it from its slot and placing it on the ‘reading’ table below for the visitor to inspect. Along with each brick is delivered its history and relevant information. The visitor is allowed to examine the brick before it is replaced within the archive.

The collection can be used for reference for people trying to reference a brick, find a certain type of brick or people researching a certain period in the history of bricks. This is a library of bricks if you like, however no bricks are loaned out.

The Temporary Collection

These hulks out in the Medway store the bricks and components of buildings which for whatever reason have been dismantled, arriving by boat they are help here until a new location can be found and the building reassembled, not accessible from the land visitors can only see the hulks from the shore.

site and the brick towers

site plan. the reds are where the bricks are collected. the greys are the intervention

the white bricks. i think it is done in sketch up and rendered in v-ray

check out those bricks. he did a model of the floating bricks and the frame as well.

the red bricks

another of the red brick render

BOB unleashed his fury with plummeting bricks on the trespasser!

model of the floating bricks and concrete frame. he did the bricks from a 3D printer. where can I find that in singapore?

to the main thread for more pictures and explanation.

newspaper, before the recycling bin

structures

this makes lego look a little frumpy. (from pepper paints)