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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

I think this shows the problem that people like me have with design.

I don't notice good design. Things just work and everything is where it should be. It's taken hundreds of years of collected wisdom and research and skill to get it like that, and someone has worked very hard to make it so I don't notice their work.

I do notice when someone draws a willowy slender tree on the side of a towerblock. It'd be great to have more shrubbery and trees up high, but at least they could do it realistically. And I get the impression that they forget about all the root system and maintenance and etc.

England has a problem with terribly dull architecture.

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There is a building in Paris whose facade is a forrest of shrubbery.

http://www.eco-eloquence.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_2736.jpg

I was there and it's pretty cool looking. All the plants look very happy too.

Very cool, but that building at 3 stories is no sky-scrapper and having plants grow on it is actually reasonable.

True, I'm just saying it seems possible to construct facades with plants where all the water and nutrients are supplied from within the building's walls through pipes and stuff.

I wonder what the technical limitations would be to building that on a skyscraper ... we can have running water on top floor, so why not running water in the facade?

The article indicates that the temperature fluctuations and wind speed are much more extreme as you go higher. Maybe it would still work by selected well-suited plants? But those well-suited plants are probably not going to be the kind of plants the articles author was complaining about using in their renderings.

Well we have trees growing in the alps quite high up, so I'm sure it's possible.

Unless ground level plus skyscraper height equals above the tree line. But do we have such high skyscrapers yet?

That is the musee de quai branly. It's a vertical garden on one of the sides of the main building. If you look really close there is a lot of infrastructure to water and feed those plants. Also, at this altitude and orientation the plants are shielded from weather extremes fairly well. The architect was complaining that these high-rises don't have any of this plant nutrient infrastructure nor the shielding. If you've been to the top of the Eiffel tower you'll know the wind can get pretty intense up there. Now imagine trying to exist as a tree up there.

The problem is that architects are trying to make their buildings look more ecofriendly, green by putting more trees on it.

Yes, but couldn't we put all that infrastructure in skyscrapers?

Also trees are quite sturdy, in the desert they grow as high up as 1500m according to wikipedia. Here in Europe we have lone trees in the alps as high up as ~1800m if I remember my primary school geography correctly. Have you ever been so high? It gets pretty crazy as far as weather is concerned and situation can change from lovely sun to heavy storm with insane cold in a matter of minutes.

you could but most of these architect renderings don't look like they have any of that. Some of them are communal terraces with deep infrastructure for trees to grow down into. But a few of these renderings are smaller terraces and judging from the rendering just 30-50cm of structure above the apartment below. Except grass not much can grow there. I've seen some pullt it off fairly well. Like the Sands Marina Bay Hotel in Singapore. In real life it looks like it does in the renderings before groundbreaking.

This is not about good design, this is about whether it's possible.

If it was possible it would certainly not be a bad idea as it would allow for even more interesting types of architecture.

So you might not notice it, but you do reap the benefits of good design (which should not be confused with aesthetics)

It's possible just not feasible and therefore there is no interest in executing these plans by corporations.

> This is not about good design, this is about whether it's possible.

...but a good designer would have some appreciation of whether it's possible or not and thus not bother drawing trees on tops top of skyscrapers. Or at least they'd draw realistic stumpy trees.

> but you do reap the benefits of good design

Absolutely, yes. I need to be clearer. I am very grateful for good design. It has made my life better. Through HN I have developed a better appreciation for the hard, hidden, work of good design. In the past I automatically thought of of things I'd find on Yanko as 'designery stuff' - but I've learnt that many designers hate that kind of design just as much as I do.

dcurtis got some stick for taking so long to pick out nice cutlery, but at least he was only choosing the best from real cutlery. Yanko gives me things like this (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/fractal-utensils_n_...)

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