from BOTANIC GARDEN

Architect:    Arif Ozden, Designer/Interior Architect Landscape Architecture Company: Botanic Garden | www.botanicgarden.com.tr  An overdeveloped megalopolis such as Istanbul severely suffers from   lack of parks. The more the city expands the more green areas we   need in order to sustain a quality urban life. It is easy to find   these areas if you are working in suburbia, but when it comes to the   city center, the crowding of buildings makes it more difficult for a   landscape architect to find the living space to operate. Landscape itself is obstructed by concrete walls that block our   view. The horizontal space is limited and must be dedicated to   living and doing business; gardens are pricey and rare.   It should then be obvious, yet not so common, that the vertical   spaces themselves become an object of landscaping. If city dwellers   do not have the time to lower their eyes to look at the green, it is   time that the garden itself rises to meet their gaze. The Gizia Showroom is a new building of one of the leading   international textile companies in Turkey. The building, an   innovative marvel in itself, is located in an old business area of   Istanbul, crowded and congested. It has no garden area, so the   project was to make a unique work, to solve creatively the problem   of space. The idea of creating a vertical garden was originally   proposed both by the owner and the architectural team as a way to   distinguish and promote the showroom; it was going to be the first   outdoor vertical installation in the entire country.   The small back courtyard on the top of the building is the only   outdoor gathering and hosting place of the showroom. It is open to   the weather but is fully surrounded by high walls, which completely   cover the view and do not offer any relief to the eye. The purpose   of the garden is to smooth the geometry of the space and to give   breath and color to an otherwise somber space.   The vertical garden has been designed on one of the terrace walls   with a 3.5m height and 6.5m width dimension. A steel infrastructure   holds the 22m2 panel attached onto the façade of the wall. Large   slabs of a particular PVC are hung on the steel construction and   these are covered with a fabric where the plants are planted within   deep pockets stuffed with perlite.     The plants on a vertical garden cannot rely on soil from which to   gather their nutrients; the ingenious solution is to plant the bare   roots into perlite, not too dissimilar to the high school exercise   of growing sprouts in cotton.   The fabric and the perlite play the part of soil, evenly spreading   the nutrients to all corners of the wall; relying purely on soil and   water would not work as gravity would finally take its toll,   dragging the life sources of the garden toward the bottom of the   structure. The irrigation system is obviously the heart of the creation as the   nutrients themselves are mixed in a roof tank and distributed on the   sheet with the water by a dosage pump. The linear dripping system   guarantees a continuous supply of water and nutrients through the   porous fabric.   The living structure of the vertical garden is finally covered by a   large blue sheet of stucco net; the purpose of the net is to   increase the carrying capacity of the fabric. Indeed, as the fabric   is organic, in time it might start rotting and let itself down with   the weight of the plants and gravity.   The sheet is colored bright blue in a bold statement of creativity;   the wall does not pretend to be a natural development, but it openly   reminds the viewer of the struggle of mankind to hang on to the   environment, even where it seems impossible to salvage some green   areas.   In time the green will of course expand to cover completely the blue   sheet, but while the wall might appear more ‘natural’ to the   distracted eye, it will always hide in its core the creative act of   this uncanny installation.   We need to be grateful to the private sector for showing the clear   sightedness that allowed us to develop this most innovative piece of   landscaping. It can only be hoped that the municipality will take   the hint and spread these ideas into public areas, starting to cover   a city in green which is often too grey and arid.  Landscape Architect Elif Bonelli