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The hydroponic garden.

The building wearing a green cover.

Creating beakers by glass-blowing technique.

Creating beakers by glass-blowing technique.

Creating beakers by glass-blowing technique.

The ferns receive nutrition drop-by-drop through beakers which are full of bacterial culture.

The mechanical system which provides nutrition to the ferns.

The hydroponic garden.

The building wearing a green cover.

Creating beakers by glass-blowing technique.

Creating beakers by glass-blowing technique.

Creating beakers by glass-blowing technique.

The ferns receive nutrition drop-by-drop through beakers which are full of bacterial culture.

The mechanical system which provides nutrition to the ferns.

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R & Sie(n), the Parisian practice, takes the design of a ‘green’ façade to new heights in ‘Lost in Paris’.

Hydroponics, derived from the Greek words hydro (water) and ponos (labour), is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, without soil. Terrestrial plants may be grown with their roots in the mineral nutrient solution only or in an inert medium, such as perlite, gravel, or mineral wool. Maximising the value of this possibility is what forms the crux of Paris-based R & Sie’s project in a highly urban scenario, entitled ‘Lost in Paris’.

The firm has toyed with the concept of a naturally green façade since the 1990s, but Lost in Paris is their most ambitious attempt yet. A 130sqm building in South Paris not only houses a family of four but also hosts a living laboratory of over 1,200 ferns or Dryopteris filix-mas. But since hydroponics necessarily implies that no soil can nurture the plants, 300 glass beakers “blow” components for bacterial culture, while also providing extra light through refraction.

The result is a ‘living’ wall, where the façade provides for itself. The ferns are wrapped around the structure and fed mechanically with a liquid mix of bacteria. They get their nutrition drop by drop through the beakers, which are full of especially prepared bacterial chemical culture mix, while rainwater is collected to water the plants.

Under its green wrapping, the house itself is made of concrete. A polyurethane coat for insulation, sheltered in its turn by a thin plastic shell, covers the new-built structure. In order for the walls and the insulation layers to be protected from the plants’ roots, a distance was kept in-between the plastic layer and the hanging garden.

Therefore, the whole system works by itself, under of course the care and watchful eye of the owners, who received the system’s ‘instructions’ from the design team, when they moved in. It is difficult to imagine a family residing behind that what appears to be an ecological art installation but surprisingly the view from inside out seems equally sublime. The house remains green throughout the year, with small changes in the ferns’ colourings and leaf thickness, according to the seasons, while the required type and amount of bacteria need to adjust in response to the light and weather conditions.

R & Sie explains that ‘all our projects are based on a similar protocol; they touch the boundaries of architecture. It takes off from a typically ecological approach, but goes beyond that. People are always curious when they walk by but sometimes they find the system creepy, or even dangerous; it is a game of attraction and repulsion.’

While this par ticular project was non-conformist, but at the same time ver y real in its interpretation of greening the environment, experimentation by architects with various models of green façades is not new. Most famously Jean Nouvel’s Musée du Quai Branly that opened in 2006 illustrated this concept in an urban context. However, what is questionable is the lifespan of the living wall. The green wall in Nouvel’s building did not last more than a couple of years, wilting thereafter due to a number of changed surrounding conditions. One hopes that R & Sie’s delightful inter vention does not meet the same fate.

CREATING THE BEAKERS 

All the collecting glasses were made by a technique called glassblowing. This glass-forming technique involves inflating the molten glass into a bubble, with the aid of the blowpipe, or blow tube. The transformation of raw materials into glass takes place around 2400°F (1315°C); the glass emits enough heat to appear almost white hot. The glass is then left to “fine out” (allowing the bubbles to rise out of the mass), and then the working temperature is reduced in the furnace to around 2000°F (1100°C). At this stage, the glass appears to be of bright orange colour. The technique allows the beakers to have an almost frothing appearance.

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