Approval for Hotel Covered in Plants | Hacker News Reader

Approval for Hotel Covered in Plants

ianvisits.co.uk

46 pointsedward28 comments

Also see The ParkRoyal on Pickering in Singapore. https://wp.architecture.com.au/international/award-for-comme...

Today the plants along the edge have grown and hang off the balconies, and I think it looks even better: https://www.businessinsider.sg/parkroyal-on-pickering-just-g...

The climate in singapore is probably more conducive to lush foliage than London.

A stylistically different example is One Central Park in Sydney [1], which appears to still be going strong. Although I don't know what the maintenance for it is like.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Central_Park#Vertical_hang...

>The developer claims the wall – made up of a mix of plants – will generate seven tonnes of oxygen in a year and extract nine tonnes of C02 annually among other benefits

So the plants in the wall get bigger and heavier each year? Presumably there's a limit, structurally as well as visually. I'm no expert, but I believe 9 tonnes of CO2 means an extra 2.5 tonnes of carbon every year.

I suppose they could be trimming and composting/bio-charring excess plant material, but given the lack of information I kind of doubt that a serious CO2 life-cycle and residence analysis has been done.

Yeah, this is most likely just a gross multiplication of CO2 absorption with plant mass that completely ignore the fact they are hiring some plant care company that's just gonna bin any overgrowth and completely neglect the absorption.

But hey, it lets guests make themselves look good on twitter and isn't that all that really matters?

The wall is close to 200m long and 40m tall. If it were made of 4000 cubic meters of concrete, it might weigh 10,000 tons, and the whole building might weigh 4 times that amount. 2.5 tons is a rounding error!

Unfortunately, the chemistry and energy use to make a cubic meter of concrete releases about a third of a ton of CO2. So this building, implemented in concrete, would extract 9 tons of CO2 annually and take more than 1,000 tons of CO2 to pour.

Edit: I now see that the images (especially [1]) describe a more expensive steel-and-glass building. It will probably still include lots of concrete, but 2.5 tons across the whole building is not a big concern. (Not to mention they'll likely have to do some gardening occasionally).

[1]: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/...

Keep in mind that the 2.5 tonnes is carbon only, the mass of additional plant matter is likely more than double that given the water content and other elements. Additionally, it's not evenly distributed over the building, but cantilevered out.

That said, I agree with you that it's likely to be trimmed for aesthetic reasons well before it becomes a structural issue; which is why the annual carbon offset claimed is misleading - it assumes the biomass increases annually without intervention.

Some of that mass goes into the leaves, which fall off.

I bet this will look awesome when it's finished... And then 5 years later, it will be half dead, and it'll be removed.

Really it's just a way to win approval for a building that otherwise would have been denied as being too ugly.

This reminds me a lot of PARKROYAL on Pickering[0], a very cool-looking hotel in Singapore. It's probably much easier to pull off this look in a tropical rainforest climate, though.

[0] https://www.archdaily.com/363164/parkroyal-on-pickering-woha...

London is basically a temperate rain forest.

For majority of the year, you're not wrong. Assuming you can have a forest of concrete.

[EDIT ADD] Yes London does have some parks, though you could look at those as Oxygen watering holes in relation to the local environment.

I'm also reminded of the Oasia Downtown hotel in Singapore, which, like Park Royal, is designed by WOHA. It's a fairly recently completed skyscraper, and the plant scaffolding hasn't fully been overgrown yet: https://archello.com/project/oasia-hotel-downtown

Great idea, but I hope they have provisioned for a lot of expensive care and maintenance to keep the living walls alive, otherwise they'll end up with a dead living wall like the one in Paradise Park in London[0].

[0] https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/home/paradise-park-livin... or https://www.standard.co.uk/news/the-living-wall-of-islington...

This isn’t a small government run building where finding the right talent and money to fix a failed pump system is a big deal.

But it is at a much larger scale, even far more than the Singapore example others posted. So they better not cheap out on the watering and maintenance tech/budget.

Yes, I'd imagine a hotel in central London would also have more incentive to keep it going. Maybe in the past 10 years the technology and/or understanding has improved too.

There's a much smaller scale one on a private residence that I pass most days that the owner (or new owner) has given up on though. There's something very sad about it, like it symbolises lofty dreams for a greener future that have withered and died.

There's a living wall by Old Street roundabout (on a WeWork no less!) that's survived the first year ok.

https://goo.gl/maps/X5h4qrwHQZcmFAxa7

It's grown in a bit since the Streetview was taken, and is still in very good health.

With the right plants and a watering system, the upkeep shouldn't be insane.

I really like the idea here but man I hope the system is well thought out / proven. Maintaining plants can be a bit of a chore as it is when they're vertical on the ground in the earth.

This seems like it would be pretty complex to get just right and repairs and etc would be a lot of work.

> Fully open to the public

Probably end up like the top floor of the walkie talkie. It's free to visit, but you need to book a ticket for a specific time well in advance (if you're visiting London it's a better visit than the Shard though, in all honesty).

I'm enamored by the aesthetics of it but it really leaves me quite curious as to the practical considerations of doing it or what might prevent it from being done more often.

Do you have houseplants?

Keeping plants alive requires labour and water. Labour is expensive. Water needs to be kept carefully contained, unless you want it to destroy your building.

It's easy if you select the right houseplants. Most of my houseplants don't require a lot of water. I have a sunroom with cactuses that I give occasional drinks in the winter, and then every 2-3 weeks in the summer I drag the hose in and soak the pot. Doesn't take much time at all.

IMO, they will probably choose the plants carefully and set up an automatic watering system.

One small thing it seems people forget...

Plants can rip concrete apart like nothing.

So how are they going to ensure the plants themselves do not compromise the integrity of the building structure after some point and time?

Having done restoration work on old abandoned warehouses, I doubt they thought this cunning plan through all the way. Roots like to find a crack filled with any kind of moisture, and then keep digging.

First thought I had - how effective it can be cooling the street down.

Reminds the water walls they use to cool air down.

Does anyone know if there are any plans for more buildings to be done like this? This looks like a really great way forward!

It probably would be much more efficient if the guests would simply refrain from travelling to London.

OP is about a hotel that has planters on its walls so that exterior walls are covered in plants. People approve of this hotel. It is not that ratings on a website are overwhelmed by fake raters established in positions where they can spoof the system.

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