Skyscrapers for the urban people

 Sky is the limit and nobody ever touched the sky. It seems that architects and urban landscape designers are taking the idea seriously. At least, vertical green spaces on the high-rise towers are saying so.

If you are living in any growing metropolis for couple of decades you must have noticed the ever-receding greenery in the urban vicinity. We need offices, schools, health centers, conference blocks, housing and so many facilities. So, we keep on cropping the parks and gardens. This is sad but unavoidable.

However, architects and designers are coming up with solutions. Grow vertically if you can’t grow in width. If buildings are taking up green spaces, then put green within the building. Idea is simply appealing but not so easy to come up with an executable design. We have one such effective design, which can make urban highrises environment friendly.

Top floors in highrise towers make way to expensive and spacious condos for rich people. This might look profitable from construction guys’ perspective but in environmental sense this is nothing but wastage of living space. And the wastage is more costly if those building are eating up public green spaces, like parks and gardens.

Designers proposed to turn those spaces into vertical gardens for public use and growing greenery. With greenery in the surroundings, life in those highrises would be more livable.

In his design, an architect has tried to compensate loss of public green spaces with vertical greeneries. And he gives 4 ways for it:

1. Green wall

2. Green walkways

3. Vertical farming

4. Sustainable initiatives

Let’s have a look in detail.

1. Green wall

This is an old concept that designers used to cover the tower blocks from sides. Considering the height of the towers, green walls would give back a large area of green space. Besides, these walls would also help in keeping the building cool. Result would be cut down in cost of artificial air conditioning.

2. Green walkways

Central block of the tower would be surrounded by pedestrian walkways. And designer proposes circular green pods, mainly grass, on the walkways. These pods will revive the feeling of walking through the park. Walking through the lush green grasses has very calming effect.

3. Vertical farming

The design also thinks about the food, required to feed urban population. And vertical green towers can accommodate vertical farms too. Open floor areas would be used for growing foods like potato, lettuce, tomatoes, berries etc. These towers can even have their own poultries to support the requirement of animal protein.

4. Sustainable initiatives

Growing green doesn’t make any change if we are wasting too much energy and non-renewable resources. So, the designer proposed to implement green technologies like, rain water harvesting, use of more natural daylight and cross ventilation with natural air. They would make green walls and vertical farming for self-sustainability. Besides, buildings would have less carbon footprint.