Patrick Blanc

For the ski mountaineer, see Patrick Blanc (ski mountaineer).
Patrick Blanc
Vertical garden of the Musée du Quai Branly in 2012.
Halles, Avignon (2005) at the date of creation.
Patrick Blanc, Centre commercial des quatre Temps (2006), La Défense, (Puteaux).

Patrick Blanc (born June 3, 1953, Paris) is a French botanist, working at the French National Centre for Scientific Research,[1] where he specializes in plants from tropical forests. He is the modern innovator of the green wall, yet recent scholarship on the subject suggest that the vertical garden (aka. Green Wall, Botanical Brick) was invented by Professor Stanley Hart White at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1938. Professor White patented the first known Vertical Garden, or "Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System", as a treatise on modern garden design, predating Patrick Blancs contemporary patents by nearly 50 years [2][3] Although Blanc did not invent the vertical garden, he is responsible for modernizing and popularizing the garden type. Blanc describes his vertical garden as follows:

“

On a load-bearing wall or structure is placed a metal frame that supports a PVC plate 10 millimetres (0.39 in) thick, on which are stapled two layers of polyamide felt each 3 millimetres (0.12 in) thick. These layers mimic cliff-growing mosses and support the roots of many plants. A network of pipes controlled by valves provides a nutrient solution containing dissolved minerals needed for plant growth. The felt is soaked by capillary action with this nutrient solution, which flows down the wall by gravity. The roots of the plants take up the nutrients they need, and excess water is collected at the bottom of the wall by a gutter, before being re-injected into the network of pipes: the system works in a closed circuit. Plants are chosen for their ability to grow on this type of environment and depending on available light.

 ”

This type of achievement exemplifies Blanc's ideas as an ecological engineer and also the 15th target of the Haute Qualité Environnementale ("High Quality Environment") project, although the latter gives particular stress to use of more local species, at least outdoors.

In 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.[4]

Works

Green walls
Other works

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ping Magazine: Vertical Garden: The art of organic architecture, 8 December 2006
  2. ↑ Richard L. Hindle (2012): A vertical garden: origins of the Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System (1938), Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly, 32:2, 99-110
  3. ↑ Kristin Hohenadel: All His Rooms Are Living Rooms in The New York Times, 3 May 2007
  4. ↑ "RIBA announces 12 Honorary Fellowships". architecture.com. 6 October 2009. Retrieved 15 April 2014.
  5. ↑ http://www.galeriaprzymorze.eu/?site=greenwall (Polish)
  6. ↑ http://www.athenaeumhotel.com/pdf/The-Living-Wall-one-year-on.pdf (viewed 17 August 2011)
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