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.

Vertical Greening Happy Holidays

Case studies of tropical vertical greeneries seen during my holidays in Indo goes to show that you don't have to have green walls to have vertical greening! Yay~ holiday homework~



An elevated pot of bright red coral plant, Russelia sp. This plant can drape from 2nd floor balconies ad create this red-ish curtain. It thrives well on sunny spots.




Semi aquaponic orchid plantings. See those roots reaching our to feed from the pond's nutritious (phish phooed) water?




"Tarzan ropes" jungle vine climbers. These vines are also used locally as ropes for building house ladders, furniture and bridges!

Melbourne vignettes

Back from the holidays to post some PS-Vintaged photos from Melbourne...


Docksland... just as it used to be years ago, pretty, expensive, disconnected from the CBD (as planners would say)


Yellow budgies at Victoria market.


Pears at vic mart also. Vic mart is my new favorite spot in town. I'd love to live near there if I ever get to be in Melbourne again. To walk there... to smell all the fruits and veggies and cheese... *sniff sniff* ahhh...

I miss campo de fiori.

Melbourne

I'm back in Melbourne, perched atop the 45th floor of a certain building, in an office that has views to the bay, to the sea that leads to the Antarctica. Hmm. PRiddY priDDy~

Living back in Melbourne again feels so familiar... sometimes feel as if I haven't even left, except the numbers of friends I have here had really dwindled! Oh well, it's been years. The same streets: Flinders, Swanston, Bourke, the trams, the trains. Ahh... and the familiar "The next train is..." voice when I pressed the green button at the stations. But Oh! Zone three has disappeared!

And did you noticed,

No pictures!

Alas! Since Melbourne is kinda like home to me, I can't be bothered to take pictures of it... it's like, I don't have any picture of my own home to. None. Got pictures of Spain, Swiss, and Sweden, but home... Twenty two years of going home to the same house, and never bothering to take picture of it! (I think I'll take a pic of it just before it gets renovated. soon).

Plantsey

As I guzzle away at plant names and pictures at FytoGreen, Somerville, here are a smattering of the week's leafy highlights:

Fully shaded vertical garden research wall attached to the shed.

Campanula - Blue bells in full bloom, as can be seen on the top right corner of the wall.

Golden Serpent Fern- This particular one hangs from one of the research vertical gardens with minimum maintenance, and thrives pretty well.

Seaside daisy - is one of the easiest outdoor flowering plant to grow on the wall. So easy that it can be considered as a weed, actually.


Kalanchoe 'Elves' Bells' - A new type of Kalanchoe for which I can't find the exact species name online. They have a gaudier color than the regular Kalanchoes. They've done well on the trial walls as well.


Aloes from Aloe-aloe. The colors just look fantastic, don't they?


A rather adorable pot of grass.
It's an oz native, related to carnations, apparently.


A collection of red-foliaged landscape grasses at PlantMarks nursery that we visited on Thursday.


Astroturf! - Plastic lawn for those who wants a green lawn but can't be bothered to take care of it. I thought that the turf looked so real that they bothered to sprinkle a little weed here and there... and it turns out that the weed was real!


Grow your own mushroom kit! No sunlight needed =P

New buddy

She plays 'catch' all day long,
And her name is Daisy!

Greening the mall

Look! Living plants! Not plastic!
A greenhouse + shopping mall at Chadstone, Melbourne.


Glossy green real bamboo (polished with white oil)


Fytogreen's plant wall at Wittner's shoes! Gorgeous isn't it?
Plants include rabbit's foot fern (Davallia), Tahitian Bridal veil (Transcendentia), Asplenium oblongifolium, a type of Cissus and variegated Philodendron. This particular wall is fully indoor with very little exposure from the sun via the atrium, but it is doing very well with the strong artificial lighting in place.


Now. Does the green increase sales?

Bromeliads!

On Friday I met Mark Paul from the Greenwall company, and he kindly showed me round his greenhouse and lovely bromeliad collection.

Purple Trees

I've never seen trees so purple before...



The first thing I thought was... wow, they'll look fabulous in renderings! Jacaranda trees, some kind of a Sydney version of the cherry blossoms. They bloom for about 2 weeks in spring, and I happen to be around here at a lucky time!


Even the droppings, are just gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous...

3mths.l8r

This past three months in Europe felt like a long time.
It must be a wanderlust's dream to be living and working across Europe the way I did, peddling on some green research project.

Many people that I have met during this trip I contacted for the first time by e-mail, and its always exciting to meet them for the very first time. Are they nice? And do I look like what they expected me to be? Excluding my encounter with the rude talking landlord in Sweden... the encounters have been all unbelievably good.

The Dreer award has opened up a chance of a lifetime to travel and work across Europe.

It has been wonderful.

And soon, off to Australia!


(Up) My wonderfully airy and plantly apartment room in Munich.

Linden tree

On the last week of october, I came back to Switzerland again to say bye to friends and plants of Waedensvil~


Cosmos flowers in the ZHAW garden...


I learnt a new smell while I'm in europe,
the smell of a street...
lined with blooming linden tree.

This tree is molting leaves right now and obviously not having flowers. Before in July though, it had fruits, and almost everyday I am there, we have tea here with Phillip and Simone, while drinking the linden tea (me) and expresso (them). I loved this tree so much that when I see them still in bloom in Sweden... I remembered, and breathed deeeply... oh, the sweet and gentle scent of a linden tree...


View of the Swiss alps from the plane.
Second must visit again place in Europe. After Rome, of course.

Oktoberfest

Can't go away from Munich without talking about THE Oktoberfest...


Endless lines of marching bands, girls on beerwagons for two hours long... as if they emptied out all the Bavarian villages aorund Munich!


This is my favorite display, a herd of heidi goats!


on and on...


Up movie mascots dressed up in Oktoberfest theme.


But the festival really is a two-faced one. On the good face is the traditional parade (above) and on the 'bad' face is the drinking. Almost needless to tell, Oktoberfest is the biggest drinking party in the world. And sight like this is kinda common in the fest area, around the station and even near my apartment! (Drunkard sleeping in the corner of the street on bright daylight)


In the meantime, for two weeks, Thereßenwiese is turned into a giant theme park with scary scary games...




"I love you" cookies thing...


No pretty beer pictures here though. I almost didn't drink the last week I'm in Munich because I've been getting sick practically every week for the past month. But there's the last beer I had in Munich! It's my fav beer, a Radler (beer with lemonade), with some tender pork cutlet~