A Garden Within The City

New York City. the Big Apple. the place where dreams are made of. Forever, it seems, that big city has a changing landscape. The Chrysler and the Empire State Building are just two of the million or so buildings that create this city’s character. It’s not exactly somewhere you’d expect to see such a green vista. Lissoni Casal Ribeiro’s innovative project, titled ‘Skylines’, the project will be a vertical garden city, offering its own complete ecosystem in the middle of NYC.

The tower is planned to accumulate water and wind to be turned into energy, anticipating that the rest of NYC will follow suit and allow the city to change from The Big Smoke to something a little less polluting. The functions, administered vertically, will feature the platforms used to grow the trees, plants or veggie patches, using a soiless system as to reduce the heavy metal contaminants in the grown food.

Immersed in the greenery of the building will be a sports arena, a hospital and floors for function spaces. In terms of energy requirements, the building will be self-energised by filtering the air, absorbing carbon dioxide and solar radiation and reusing rainwater to keep the greenery looking fresh.

No word yet on when this building will be actualised, but we at M2 hope soon. A bit more character needs to be added to the city and we think this is exactly it.

Images: Courtesy of Lissoni Casal Ribeiro