Patrick Blank is the rock star of living walls. He started it way back in the 70’s and has since then become super successful at it all over the world. He does corporate offices, high rise buildings, public spaces, jet setting around the world building beautiful works of art in the form of plants growing vertically.
I admire his work, although he seems a little high on the ego trip for me, but he is more entrepreneurial artiste than ecological activist so it is to be expected.
Hi work has some sustainable issues that need to be resolved, namely the walls require a lot of water and monitoring in the form of pumps and plant food. Remove the water, pumps and plant food and his walls die. Here in Brooklyn we are working to solve that issue by passing gravity fed gray water down the wall instead – no pump, only waste water that is full of plant food nutrients anyway.
We are going to see a lot of Brownstone living walls popping up around Brooklyn. It is easy to accomplish technologically, has achieved financial sense and the social mood is right for it.
Here are some vids of Patrick and his amazing work.