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Vertical Is the New Horizon: an Overview of Vertical

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Vertical Is the New Horizon: an Overview of Vertical VERTICAL IS THE NEW HORIZON: AN OVERVIEW OF VERTICAL GARDENING IN THE 21ST CENTURY by NICHOLAS ALLEN PETTY (Under the Direction of Bruce K. Ferguson) ABSTRACT With the large-scale expansion of the built environment, the amount of vegetation present in those regions encroached upon by development has correspondingly decreased. In an era where building upwards is quickly replacing the practice of building outwards, a considerable amount of vertical surface area is available for the integration of vegetation within new or existing architecture. The parking deck, viewed by many as a necessary evil in today’s automobile-driven society, is one structure that possesses tremendous potential towards the implementation of such a strategy. Via a general analysis of current vertical gardening practices and specific case study applications on the University of Georgia Campus and within downtown Athens, Georgia, this thesis explores the manner and degree to which vertical gardening technologies can and should be integrated into (and onto) existing parking structures – and all structures, for that matter – as a means of improving their appearance and function within the greater landscape. INDEX WORDS: vertical gardening, façade greening, living walls, mur vegetal, green walls, parking structures, climbing plants VERTICAL IS THE NEW HORIZON by NICHOLAS ALLEN PETTY B.A., University of Michigan, 2003 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE ATHENS, GEORGIA 2008 ©2008 Nicholas Allen Petty All Rights Reserved VERTICAL IS THE NEW HORIZON: AN OVERVIEW OF VERTICAL GARDENING IN THE 21ST CENTURY By NICHOLAS ALLEN PETTY Major Professor: Bruce K. Ferguson Committee: R. Alfred Vick Tim Smalley Linda Henneman Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2008 iv To Annie Your patience and support are mesmerizing I love you more each day v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Foremost, I would like to acknowledge my major professor, Bruce Ferguson, for being a willing guide throughout this entire process and a credit to both the University of Georgia and the discipline of Landscape Architecture as a whole. It also behooves me to thank Marianne Cramer, my original major professor (for an entirely different subject). Our failed experiment will always rank among the most enlightening and rewarding periods of my education and I will endure to one-day finish what was started. I would like to thank those individuals who comprise the Committee for this thesis: Alfie Vick, Dr. Tim Smalley, and Linda Henneman. Not only have these individuals offered their review and criticism with regards to the final product of this exercise, each has contributed in their own way to the main corpus of this document through their wisdom and expertise. I would also like to express my gratitude to all of the wonderful faculty and staff associated with the School of Environmental Design – particularly Donna Gabriel, the undeniable linchpin of the operation. I sincerely hope that they name something after this woman one day. I would like to state my appreciation and admiration for those fellow classmates who energized and supported me throughout this ordeal. Most notably, I would like to give a shout- out to Rebecca Ratz, Drew Carman and Mike McCartin, exemplary scholars all and a ferocious band of Scrabble opponents. vi On a more personal level, I want to give special thanks to my family and friends who have instilled an enduring appreciation for the dual – but far from exclusive – realms of nature and culture, both of which have enriched my life to the utmost degree. I will make it my life’s work to advance both. You have given me with a lot to live up to, but I plan on embracing the challenge. Finally, I would like to credit the vitality and all-around awesomeness of the City of Athens and its full-time citizens. The exuberance of town life is the engine that drives the entire apparatus and I salute those mercurial sons and daughters who keep the fires stoked. See you soon. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION.............................................................................................................................iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................ v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 Purpose.............................................................................................................................. 1 Timeliness......................................................................................................................... 3 Thesis Approach............................................................................................................... 5 2 HIGH HOPES: VERTICAL GARDENING THROUGH THE AGES ................................ 7 3 THE BENEFITS OF VERTICAL GARDENS ................................................................... 28 4 WAYS AND MEANS ......................................................................................................... 57 5 THE TALE OF TWO PARKING DECKS: VERTICAL GARDENING IN ACTION ... 111 North Campus Parking Deck ........................................................................................ 118 College Avenue Parking Deck...................................................................................... 156 CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................... 195 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 206 APPENDIX A........................................................................................................................... 210 APPENDIX B ........................................................................................................................... 217 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Purpose Verticality is, and has been, a vital characteristic of the garden since its earliest conception. Therefore, the term “vertical garden” is an essentially redundant phrase. All gardens are influenced by the verticality of plant life and verticality in the garden has been forever enhanced by those artificial structures that symbolize human intervention within its confines. However, only within recent decades has the practice and perception of vertical gardening assumed a more prominent role in a larger conception of the built environment. As the amount of available open space for vegetation continues to dwindle within an increasingly dense urban environment, a subsequent call for new and innovative methods by which to integrate plant life into the greater fabric of towns and cities worldwide has gone out. Rising environmental concerns and a renewed focus upon the quality of urban experience have lent greater legitimacy and urgency to this charge, as designers continue to consider the dual aesthetic and ecological benefits of plants within an otherwise harsh and increasingly paved urban setting. Concurrently, the success of green roof technologies and contemporaneous advances within the realms of material production and horticultural practice has opened the door for enhanced levels of experimentation that continue to blur the division between architecture and landscape. From this point, the latent potential of vertical gardening emerges as an exciting method by which to further projects both large and small, representing “one of the last horticultural challenges” for designers in the present day (Dunnett and Kingsbury 2004: 28). 2 Certain high-profile vertical gardening projects have generated the majority of the headlines (primarily outside of North America) via innovative artistic gestures and/or their inclusion within larger architectural schemes. However, vertical gardening methods must pass beyond the glossy pages of design magazines and into the everyday workings of the built environment. This is not to suggest that such projects should somehow become banal and commonplace through assimilation, but rather it is in hope that these methods begin to serve a critical role in the design scheme for those endeavors, both planned and existing, that might otherwise be labeled as such. One oft-overlooked setting that must then be explored in this vein is the parking structure. Since the inception of modern vertical gardening techniques, many leading authorities on the subject have commonly referenced parking structures as one arena in which these new methods might be applied (Dunnett and Kingsbury 2004; Leenhardt and Lambertini 2007). Due, in part, to the relatively recent introduction of the various modern approaches to vertical gardening, such schemes have thus far failed to materialize at the highly-propagated scale that many have envisioned. However, as the efficiency and ecological sensitivity of surface parking continues to be scrutinized, parking structures have assumed a greater presence in many areas in which space is at a premium. Though credited with minimizing potential land use and serving a required function, parking structures are nonetheless viewed as a type of necessary evil. As a common generator of noise, particulate matter, and harmful gaseous pollutants, the parking structure is often considered to be a mono-functional blight upon the
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