Hortpark

A scientific research on vertical greenery by Singapore's NParks. A number of papers and two books have been published about this research, but I'm not going to go into details because you can find out the same thing just by googling "Hortpark" and "Vertical Green.

Compared to me... it's tall! 6 meters, to be precise.

The gruffiest wall. I like how they used the Rusellia plants here.

It's a live fuzzy soft thing.
Reminds me of the thing that that was growing HILC refrigerator at the end of the year... except that it was blue.
-.- Ewk. I had to take it out.
What was it anyway?

Twigs stuck on brownies.

Good thing that they experimented on the different systems because at least three of the 7 living walls have died or been entirely replaced. There's a picture on here and here of how it looked like originally.

Changi T3

The one green wall that is impossible to miss when visiting Singapore... The Changi Airport Terminal 3's 300-meter long green oasis/green tapestry/vertical garden/indoor landscaping (not sure what they officially call it). This system is a custom design-built system (as opposed to a pre-fab modular product) conceived by Tierra Design of Singapore, and last year it was honored with an award from ASLA.


When the wall was newly built and hasn't grown yet, you can see the service area behind it. But using a double plant support system, the wall quickly achieves a full-lush cover within two years. As you can see in the photo below, there is one climber at the front and one at the back. the plants in the front receives natural light and additional metal halide (?) lighting. While the plants at the back are shaded by the one at the front, so they are almost fully artificially lit.


When I first saw this back in 2008, I thought it's quite barren...
but over the years, it has definitely grown lush and gruffy --gruffy being my new favorite word to describe robust kind of leafy lushness. I definitely had enjoyed spending hours hanging out at the café nearby (for the free internet, really... but the airy greeny space sure puts me in just the right job-application mood. I wrote for and applied for some 10 jobs whilst being there!).

Hotel Naumi, Singapore

Back to blog again!
I just came back from a three week visit to Singapore to look at their vertical greening projects and look for my next job. I didn't have direct internet access when I was there and went for internet cafe instead. As a result of that (and forgetting my camera charger), I didn't upload my photos until I'm back home again.


Hotel Naumi is a luxury eco-chic luxury hotel designed by the Singapore-Thailand based Eco.Id Architects. It was finished in 2007, and has won a number of awards for its innovative use of skyrise greenery.


Wait. Did somebody say... green?
Looks like more steel than leafs to me!


Sure, that this green facade system is not lush green in the same way Patric Blanc's green walls are, but if you look at the system closely, they're much more sustainable than the water guzzling green wall system. In green walls, the entire substrate-surface of the wall is exposed to water loss through evaporation by heat and wind. On the other hand, green facades like this one minimize water loss because the substrate is protected in a pot, and water evaporation only occurs from soil surfaces.


The one problem with this system is that in summer/tropical heat, the sun heats up the steel so much that it could burn the plants foliage or discourage it from growing. Hence achieving plant cover on the facade is rather slow, as you can see from the skinny plant silhouette above.

Well! Let's hope that with enough water, fertilizer and love...
it'll grow and be a gruffy, green MFOpark-ish building.