GREEN TECHNOLOGIES Living Architecture

 

As part of the lecture series ‘Green Technologies – Living Architecture’, students were first introduced to the fundamentals of green technologies. In this context, green technologies refer to techniques in which living plants play a central role. Topics covered include green architecture / building greening, (blue-)green infrastructure and vegetation engineering. These approaches were analysed as (landscape) architectural concepts within their social and cultural-historical context. The interrelationships between vegetation, soil, water, climate and building structures were explored, enabling students to develop their own perspective on both traditional and innovative examples of green solutions, analyse projects independently, and devise their own concepts within the field of green technologies.

In the seminar ‘Green Technologies – Living Architecture’, building on the lecture of the same name, outstanding examples of living architecture and related phenomena from around the world were examined. Examples include natural ladders and staircases in India, a living bridge in Guangzhou, China, the dancing lime trees in Germany, living hedges in England, and the whimsical tree sculptures of the Tree Circus in California. We are interested in the interplay between plant growth processes and the underlying technologies. The correspondence observed between structural objectives and the phenomena of natural growth provides important insights for the successful design of structures using living materials. The seminar focused on the analysis and comparison of different examples within their respective contexts.