Renderings vs. Reality: The Improbable Rise of Tree-Covered Skyscrapers | Hacker News Reader

Renderings vs. Reality: The Improbable Rise of Tree-Covered Skyscrapers

99percentinvisible.org

130 pointsmisnamed56 comments

V-Guard office in Kerala, India is a 12 storied green spectacle. Plants spill out from every floor turning the structure into a vertical garden. Architect formulated a building that would use natural light and ventilation. The south and the west of the building would have more plants to block the sun. The green-screen would be equipped with drip irrigation so that when the air passes through, it would become cooler. Therefore, the office does not use much artificial lighting or air conditioning. The façade of the building becomes an interesting play of lines, planes and plants.

It is a model that works in a place such as Kerala, India where the temperature does not cross 35 degree Celsius. With the plants that line the balconies, direct sunlight does not fall on the building. Hence, 90 percent of the building is not air-conditioned.

Look for images here https://www.google.co.in/search?q=v+guard+headquarters

Thank you

Wikipedia

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/V-Guard....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Guard_Industries

Those plantings use herbaceous plants, climbers, and well-behaved shrubs of moderate size. Not trees.

The article even mentions that other types of plant can be much more practical than trees.

"Perhaps there is a seasonal element, or the trees need time to grow and fill the space"

Perhaps?!? of course, it would have been enough to look for recent photos online to see it's already nearer to the original rendeering, e.g. from wikipedia:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Bosco_Ve...

Interesting that in the original renderings a large proportion of the trees look like broadleaf, deciduous varieties. The eventual species chosen look largely coniferous. I wouldn't have though that would have been so good in terms of biodiversity.

plants, trees and flowers were chosen and put together considering the effect they have as seasons change.

Page 12 of this PDF has a list of them grouped by season with an idea of their visual impact: www.porta-nuova.com/pdf/BOSCO.pdf

Nice, but I think they still clash with the surrounding architecture. Wouldn't be nice to paint them "terracotta" so at least they blend better?

Architect here.

That amount of green is mostly shown in early renderings made by unrealist young architects or by CG artists. A rendering is just an ad, a way of selling the project and having areas of greenery is highly regarded as positive by the market. After the project is "won" that "details" are scaled down to meet reality and budgets, this time by more experienced architects pressed by investors and a ton of technical advisors.

Correction: The article's image that is wrongly attributed to "Villa Bio by Enric Ruiz-Geli" should be attributed instead to "Outrial house by KWK Promes".

http://www.archilovers.com/projects/42124/outrial-house.html

I heard from some architects that's the exact reason they stopped using photorealistic 3D renders. A lot of customers started to complain that the building looked totally different when finished.

Well, yes, "item not as described": if you're going to show pictures, they should be representative of the final result.

Some of these designs look amazing. One thing is for sure, trees make cities much more pleasant wherever they are, whether along tree-lined streets, in parks or I guess on skyscrapers.

Perhaps putting trees on the ground is more practical, but the conclusion to this article makes no sense: "A treescraper approach suffers the same problem, but magnified: it lifts trees out of shared public spaces entirely, putting them up where they can be seen by many but enjoyed by few. Thus removed, they become more like window dressing, green ornaments rather than social activators." If you're seeing the trees, you're enjoying them. Trees are "social activators"? Whaaaat? Is this yet another attempt by a journalist at manufacturing some sort of outrage, in order to drive page views? Why turn treescrapers into some social justice issue?

I think they are saying only rich people can fully enjoy skyscraper trees (i.e. they can lie on the ground). Pleb can just watch but never touch the trees.

Right, but I think its a bit unfair to compare skyscraper trees to parks. It doesn't have any relation to 'real' wilderness, these are more like balcony gardens with very large potted plants.

Adding trees on the building doesn't take remove them from the ground. What kind of argument is that?

It is probably about a mental association of decorative trees in the city-dense areas with public space and the off-limits skyscraper tree space gets in conflict with this association. Don't worry, in time they'll get used to it.

All buildings in cities have a social component; the whole reason you're in a city rather than in a campus or remote plot of land is because there are other people, and relations with these other people are important. If buildings turn into towers of exclusivity, thumbing their nose at outsiders walking by, it harms the connection to other people. It becomes part of the character of the city and ulmitately makes the city worse off. And that in turn harms the people who own the building; not only do they devalue the building by harming the city, but they make it harder to hire people since fewer people want to live in a city like that.

Look, if you want trees on your building then put them there. It shouldn't matter whether it makes anyone else jealous. Let them buy their own trees.

Companies are made out of people who interact with other people. Why would people want to work for a company that acts like a dick?

Not only is it self harm, but it also pollutes the public space, and the public has a say in that too. We don't yet live in an autocracy.

I can see we're probably not going to come to any resolution. I think you believe more strongly in absolute property rights, while I believe that if you want absolute property rights, you should relocate outside a city where you don't have neighbours. Neighbours make all the difference. They have to suffer your outward appearances. If you're going to put up a hostile face, they're going to be hostile right back, and there are more of them than there are of you.

Trees pollute the public space? If mixing neighbors and trees causes problems, then the problem is with the neighbors, not the trees. Trees are awesome. Assuming sustainable low-pollen species are chosen, why not cover every building in green?

Trees don't pollute the public space; a view of inaccessible trees pollutes the public viewscape.

The same argument can be made against anything. I might have a car you can see. But you can't access it. Does this pollute the public viewscape? You might have windows or balconies that I can see, but I can't access them. Does this pollute the public viewscape?

The root system of many tree species is as large or larger than the canopy of leaves. Where are those roots supposed to be? Did you add an additional 20 get below each floor for them to dig into?

Far more likely, the architect either didn't account for the invisible part of the tree, or knows what will actually happen: these trees will live a decade at most.

The trees on the 30th floor will never have a thick trunk, because they will die and be replaced every 5 to 10 years with new saplings.

> The trees on the 30th floor will never have a thick trunk, because they will die

And won't it be lovely to see these trees falling thirty stories onto unsuspecting pedestrians.

Furthermore, some trees send down deep taproots, while others create a fibrous net of volume-filling roots, while others spread as widely as possible closer to the surface.

Many of the trees in architecture visualizations are like Minecraft trees. The have no roots at all. Only the aboveground portion of the tree even exists.

A related article from 2013: http://www.archdaily.com/346374/can-we-please-stop-drawing-t...

"There are plenty of scientific reasons why skyscrapers don’t—and probably won’t—have trees, at least not to the heights which many architects propose. Life sucks up there. For you, for me, for trees, and just about everything else except peregrine falcons. It’s hot, cold, windy, the rain lashes at you, and the snow and sleet pelt you at high velocity."

Edit: it makes me wonder: what about grass. A lot of grass can live up to 2km.

"Beyond that token tree, however, extensive green coverage (a thinner layer supporting mosses, succulents, herbs and grasses) is much more practical than intensive (roofs or balconies with shrubs and trees)."

Not that you go up to the rooftop of a 2km tall building on a daily basis.

The comments rip on that article fairly hard. The top comment is a pile of pictures of trees in real skyscrapers. They look nice.

http://www.archdaily.com/346374/can-we-please-stop-drawing-t...

Wow, not linked in the comments, but user Silvia mentioned the Austrian architect Hundertwasser with an interesting photo, and more the architect's work can be seen here:

http://www.inspirationgreen.com/hundertwasser-architecture.h...

I would love to live in a city designed by him.

Yeah, it reminds me of American McGee's Alice urban scenery.

The errors are in thinking trees. You should think ecosystems. But of course ecosystems require soil, bacteria, worms, bushes, insects, animals that are not cute, plants that are not majestic.

The idea of having cohabitation with other species in the high rise is noble one.

Agreed. The beauty is nice, but having a functioning environment for various bugs, worms and birds could bring back a decent ecosystem in cities. Unless people want cockroaches to be the last remaining animal around.

It would be a hell of a project to start, but once it's going, a great thing. Sadly, most home owners and building maintainers would probably consider it a nuisanc, but I think plenty of people are coming around to the idea.

Do you think its realistic (honest question) to have 57,116.0 people per square mile and also have a fully functioning ecosystem?

I think if we've decided to build a skyscraper network, we've already decided against a normal ecology by default.

We could not have sustainable ecosystem with humans included.

But we could leave some space for greens and vegetation. What I meant is - if you want a tree at floor X, you also need to have soil, worms, grass, bushes, spiders, beetles around it.

Of course this is the icky stuff that people in the high rises don't want to deal with too much.

But it is definitely doable with some nice mirror play, rain collectors, windbreakers (for the higher floors) and leaving some floors empty to have high rise gardens.

But you cannot just lift a tree with roots - you must put up soil and plant stuff and wait. It could be nice places for socializing.

So we turn the trees from gimmick into something that creates value.

Anyway, the trend to have include some green plants in buildings is very positive to me. Not everything has to be made just from steel, concrete and glass.

The big problems with all these "full of trees" designs is that it cut the light coming in the living space. When designing a house to live in, the quality of light in the living space is really important.

That upper floors get more light has always been touted as a benefit of apartments however, on the actual ground people are happy within forested or even brush covered suburbs where trees break up direct sunlight.

There may well be a market out there for people who live in short suburban apartments now, but desire to have the same kind of treescape outside their window but live in densely populated downtown.

Lots of people in the suburbs want to remove trees near their houses to increase the sunlight they get. It always struck me as crazy, but a close friend was a city planner at (at various times) Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and other cities, and she dealt with tree removal permits. It's a big thing.

The best light is not direct sunlight but diffused/reflected. Vegetation does wonders in reducing the harshness of direct sunlight.

I grew up in a house on a densely forested hill. Looking out my window was like that of a tree house. I can attest that the light from many trees is soft and gentle. My room was well lit from the sun but did not get excessively hot from direct light.

Whenever we see a rendering of a new building or city design they're always shown from a high altitude. Maybe this makes the buildings more approachable. They all look human sized.

But in reality people aren't 300 feet tall and we end up seeing at the building from a low angle. In this case the trees, which look great from above, are obscured by the balconies that hold them up.

We have an apartment complex called Central Park, in Sydney CBD which seems to have successfully grown plants on the side:

http://www.finder.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Broadway...

http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/one-central-par...

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/sites/sbs.com.au.news/files/style...

Those don't appear to be trees, but rather other kinds of plants that the article mentions are much more practical than trees.

Greensburg Indiana is ahead of the curve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decatur_County_Courthouse_%28I...

Led a group of Jeeps through Greensburg a few weeks ago. Suddenly over the radio I heard exclamations of surprise; even within Indiana most people don't know about that tree.

There's a lot about skyscrapers. Are there any deep earthscrapers in dense cities, where land is scarce? Probably not New York, since it's close to the ocean.

I personally wouldn't mind living deep underground. It feels safer than living high in the sky, even though it probably isn't due to fires or earthquakes.

Don't underestimate the importance of natural light or fresh air.

Fresh air you can get with ventilation shafts.

Natural light is harder: If it's that important, you might need either mirrors or expensive lighting that can replicate the necessary radiation.

Light tubes [0] (or sun pipes) are fairly established ways of transporting natural light, although I suspect they would need modifications to feed multiple destinations. An alternative would be to have the homes built around a central light shaft, like the proposal for Alice City in Tokyo [1].

Another great advantage of living underground is the relatively stable temperature (not too hot and not too cold) all year round.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_tube

[1] http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=8150

In Shinjuku in Tokyo you can travel pretty large distances underground by going from mall to mall. It's not particularly deep though.

And even more so in Tokyo Station. I used to live on 5th Ave and work on 10th. I would walk through the Manhattan Mall and Penn Station, coming out on 8th on the way to work every day. There really isn't much else like it in NYC unfortunately.

>Are there any deep earthscrapers

Not exactly what you are looking for, but you might enjoy _Wool_ by Hugh Howey:

http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Hugh-Howey/dp/1476735115/

Seems like a lot of these problems go away if you keep the trees small (i.e. bonsai). Of course, you still have to have someone do maintenance.

Imagine you could take a tree, put it into hibernation mode, split it into planks, build a house from it and reanimate the house... Three years ago, this would have been fantastic, but today it is impractical and tomorrow just eccentric

Just curious... how do you trim/prune trees on the sides of skyscrapers? Seems like a ton of building maintenance that probably uses a lot of diesel fuel...

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