Vegitecture – whose idea was it, anyway?
December 11th, 2008
I was at a Movers’n’Shakers breakfast this morning and happened to bump into someone from Llewellyn Davies Yeang. I had just seen this image of Daniel Libeskind’s latest tower in New York, and said I thought it bore a remarkable resemblance to Ken Yeang’s various “vegitecture” buildings.
Vegitecture is essentially the use of organic materials as an element of construction. It has mainly manifested itself over here as sedum walls, but the idea goes further – looking at how rainwater can be harvested and air purified using natural means. Yeang, who has been lecturing on the concept for years, has even suggested the concept of a “vertical farm” where tenants grow their own fruit and vegetables on the walls and roofs.
Back to the Libeskind similarity. It turns out some at LDY have thought exactly the same thing as me, with e-mails flying back and forth remarking on the resemblance. However my source assured me the practice was flattered at the resemblance, rather than concerned about plagiarism. Vegitecture has now become an architectural sub-genre - US superarchitect Perkins + Will have also jumped on the veggie bandwagon. Who is to say, now that Libeskind has joined suit, that some of his fellow starchitects might not do the same thing?
Libeskind’s Madison Square Park tower in New York:
Ken Yeang’s Zorlu Ecocity in Turkey. Note the green lightning-strike in the walls and compare it to Libeskind’s more elegant stripe of greenery.
Another Yeang design, this time for the Editt Tower in Singapore.
And finally, the design for Perkins + Will’s Antilla Tower in Mumbai.
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Readers' comments
Jason King 13 December, 2008 | Reply
Dan. It’s refreshing to see Vegitecture (the phenomenon) gaining momentum as a viable architectural form… or sub-genre as you say. Yeang is definitely the pioneer in the concept – and there’s a bit of his work in many of the projects that are being proposed. I just recently made the same judgement that Libeskind’s new building has a certain Yeang-ian flare for sure.
It’d be great to track your Ecofuss link back a bit further to the original source of Vegitecture (the term)… in this context originally coined and definied on Landscape+Urbanism as both an aesthetic and functional integration of landscape and architecture. Cheers. JK
isadora espinosa risolo 15 December, 2008 | Reply
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