The world's number one plant wall pioneer has created 300 plant wall landscapes in 40 years
Plant walls are commonplace to us now, and my friends and I often take on plant wall landscape projects, but the senior figure I want to talk about today can be called the world's number one plant wall pioneer.
Patrick Blanc, in his 60s, has slightly thinning green hair, wears a green-and-black floral shirt, a ring on his ring finger that looks like green turf, and even his long socks are the dark forest green of a woodland.
Patrick Blanc
Botanist, creator of the vertical garden
Education
Third year of doctorate, Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris VI
Doctor of Science, Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris VI
Work
Since 1982, scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research
Awards
2010 Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects
2009, one of Time magazine's 50 best inventions of the year
2005 Silver Medal of the Academy of Architecture
2005 Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters
In 2001, his first large vertical garden was completed at the Pershing Hall Hotel in Paris. Since then, Patrick Blanc has been known around the world as the "king of vertical gardening." In 2009, his vertical garden concept made it onto Time magazine's annual list of the "50 best inventions in the world," drawing attention worldwide. So far he has designed more than 300 vertical gardens around the globe. Some are indoors, some outdoors, spanning museums, office spaces, boutiques, apartments, hotels and exhibition spaces. Its
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An earnest big kid who loves plants as if they were his life
Earnest | Green hair and floral shirts
Patrick Blanc's biggest trademark is his green hair. "I've been dyeing my hair green since 1985. Ever since my plant walls gradually became famous, my green hair has become a kind of trademark."
"I'm happy to find these fun and inexpensive shirts printed with wild flowers and patterns."
Devotion | Loving plants as if they were his life
Patrick Blanc, born in 1953, received his first aquarium at the age of 7, and from then on had an innate affinity for plants. He knew to use plants to purify water, and would actively study them; this was truly the beginning of his later research on plants and vertical gardening. From then on, his whole life was inseparable from plants.
Starting from 1972, when he travelled to Southeast Asia and came into contact with the flowers and plants of the tropical rainforest, he has persisted in travelling the world to this day, doing research in forests everywhere, and over more than 30 years he has collected tens of thousands of plant specimens.
When others took an interest in his skin colour, he said, "Rather than studying my ancestry, I'm more interested in the life of plants"!
Responsibility | Seeking harmony between city and nature
How to solve the problems related to human existence in modern life: this is the motivation behind Patrick Blanc's creations.
"I think that since about half the world's people, roughly 3 billion, now live in cities, our connection with the land is growing ever weaker, and now, because of fear of global temperature rise and influenza A, and because of the gradual increase in urban population, people are very interested in ways of living vertically in harmony with nature. Plant walls are about breathing. They offer a message of optimism. This is very important proof that humanity has not destroyed everything, that we can still create things in a positive way. Plant walls not only make people want to take photos, they also bring a feeling of happiness; we have even seen birds nesting on plant walls."
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Selected works of Patrick Blanc
Work distribution map
One Central Park
This is a recent project by Blanc in collaboration with Jean Nouvel. As the world's largest vertical garden covering the surface of a building, it is also the tallest of the vertical gardens Patrick Blanc has created to date. More than 250 kinds of Australian plants and flowers installed on the outer wall grow and climb across the building, from the ground floor to the top, making the building a green tree for this new century and redefining the Sydney skyline; this 64000 sq m project sits in lush greenery as serene as New York's Central Park. It also extends the sense of verdant visuals to the adjacent 6400 sq m central park. Dense groves, open lawns and a pool are all excellent places to relax with family and friends.
EmQuartier atrium, a Bangkok landmark
At the EmQuartier mall in Bangkok, layer upon layer of encircling greenery pours down from above, like a green waterfall, and also like a spiral staircase.
Ibiza Life Marina
2nd arrondissement, Paris, France
Blanc turns ordinary building facades into splendid green spaces. This is his conviction that nature can greatly improve the quality of urban space.
This vertical garden contains 237 species of plants, arranged in a diagonal-like pattern, creating a unique vitality and sense of movement.
This project also excellently demonstrates the conceptual evolution of Blanc's work: from a preliminary geometric framework pattern to a checkerboard pattern, in which every plant is carefully arranged in a specific position.
CaixaForum Museum
The CaixaForum Museum in Madrid, Spain, has become a new local cultural and artistic landmark. Everyone who visits the CaixaForum Museum in Madrid cannot help but be drawn to the huge plant "mural" standing beside the plaza; the 24 m high, 460 sq m giant "mural" is composed of more than 15000 plants of 250 species. Unlike traditional vertical gardens, the main structure of this giant "mural" is only a little more than 5 cm thick, a thickness that is the limit achievable with other existing vertical garden technologies. Many people harbour doubts about whether the plants are real; if not for seeing it with their own eyes, many would find it hard to believe that such an intricate and enormous quantity of plants and flowers could be supported on such a thin structure.
Quai Branly Museum
Blanc's most famous work is none other than the Quai Branly Museum, which opened in Paris in June 2006. This is a project in collaboration with Jean Nouvel, using plant-based environmental installation art to ingeniously blend nature with architecture.
A series of smaller plant walls was also installed in the museum's offices.
Macquarie Group Bridge
PAMM Pérez Art Museum
At the PAMM Pérez Art Museum, Blanc was asked to design and build a three-dimensional vertical garden rather than a two-dimensional one. Blanc's solution was to create an array of "columns," suspended or self-supporting, made of steel tubes wrapped in felt layers studded with hundreds of small pockets. As usual, the plants grow in the felt layer, but Blanc had to choose them carefully, because half of the columns are exposed to sunlight, strong wind and salt spray, while the other half are in shade, so he used different plant species for the inside and outside, 80 in total, mostly tropical and native plants. The drip irrigation water supply for the vertical garden columns is provided by the building's large rooftop rainwater collection system.
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Patrick Blanc's studio
Over Blanc's long career, he has designed hundreds of Vertical Gardens. At the same time, he collaborated with Gilles Ebersolt to build a plant home of his own in the suburbs of Paris. From the outside, the house looks no different, but as soon as you step inside, you enter a whole new world. Almost all the walls in the home are covered with moss, ferns, and leaves of different shapes and sizes. If you look down from Blanc's desk, you can see fish, turtles, aquatic plants, and the reflections of tropical birds flying across the sky.
Blanc says he has not done any special interior design for his home; all he has done is build a complex ecosystem: plants, fish and water, the only things he loves. He says: "We live in an era where people are under all kinds of pressure. I think humans and nature can be more harmonious. When people see a plant wall in the subway, they become more emotional; its effect far exceeds that of plants in a garden."
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Patrick Blanc's creative sketches
Why have these vertical gardens I created, no matter how different the country or situation, without exception had such a huge impact? Perhaps simply because everyone standing in front of one, regardless of age, gender, cultural background or social status, can feel a vastness rarely found in the noisy city. The impression a vertical garden gives is by no means as simple as "plants arranged vertically." I believe that its wide variety of plants, and the nature-imitating patterns these plants present after special arrangement, are the real reason vertical gardens are so widely loved.