Tuesday, July 17, 2007

The hydroponic garden

" LA PATTERNS, INC design the Fake Plastic Trees project in Hollywood
Following the lineage of the Schindler house as an experiment in modern living in close relation to nature, our proposal "Fake Plastic Trees" is an attempt to investigate the formal, spatial and atmospheric potential of a vertically sustainable garden in synch with the most advanced technology for plant growth.


The garden is composed of a branching circuitry network made of plastic PVC tubes. These tubes circulate and distribute water with a nutrient solution that nurtures aerial vegetation of different kinds. The section of the tubes diminishes as the trajectories they describe move up and away from the ground. The flow of water is induced by water pumps from several reservoirs located in the ground. Water is distributed directly to the plants base by pumping up from the reservoirs or indirectly down by dripping from the upper branches and then moistening down. Depending on the section of tubes, their capacity to carry more or less water, different scale of plants can grow from and within them. The artificiality of plants growing directly on water, the modulation and scaling of them as they detach from the ground, the dynamism of the branching and choreographed vegetation and its likely wind induced oscillation, and the occasional forms of animal life negotiating temporary shelter within the garden, amounts to an advanced living ecosystem that both challenges and amplifies the assumed relations between the architecture of The Schindler House and its surrounding “natural” environment. "

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