Mar 2015 – May 2015 Assignment@Design and Sustainability
Final mark: 68%
Vertical Garden Toolkit
Introduction
This toolkit aims for a sustainable livelihood in the city where there would not be enough clean air because of urbanization. Nowadays, intensive urbanization has diminished the quality of life whereas used to play a key role for economic efficiency. According to the UN, more than a half of the global population has already resided in urban area and they respect that the two third of world’s population will gather to the cities by 2050.[1] Over the past decades, this phenomenon has been accelerated and caused many unsustainable problems such as overcrowded dirty slums surrounding the city centre, expansion of the concrete areas which encroach the green spaces and increasing environmental pollutions. Forests, which are able to mediate the emissions of human activities, now have been reduced because of urbanization, logging industry, agriculture and stock-farming. After that, its function to absorb greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide have degraded. Hence, diminished green spaces in human territory and deforestation are threatening the planet’s destiny which includes both human being and the Earth itself. In addition, WWF[2] explained the five effects of deforestation below;
“/Reduced biodiversity: Deforestation and forest degradation can cause biodiversity to decline. When forest cover is removed, wildlife is deprived of habitat and becomes more vulnerable to hunting. Considering that about 80% of the world’s documented species can be found in tropical rainforests, deforestation puts at risk a majority of the Earth’s biodiversity.
/Release of greenhouse gas emissions: Deforestation causes 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Of these, carbon dioxide emissions represent up to one-third of total carbon dioxide emissions released because of human causes. Find out more about climate change and deforestation.
/Disrupted water cycles: As a result of deforestation, trees no longer evaporate groundwater, which can cause the local climate to be much drier.
/Increased soil erosion: Deforestation accelerates rates of soil erosion, by increasing runoff and reducing the protection of the soil from tree litter.
/Disrupted livelihoods: Millions of people rely directly on forests, through small-scale agriculture, hunting and gathering, and by harvesting forest products such as rubber. Deforestation continues to pose severe social problems, sometimes leading to violent conflict.”
Moreover, according to a study in Nature, 50% of carbon dioxide absorbing rate from the air in Amazon rainforest has been decreased since 1990s with raising concern about future climate change for forest.[3]
To slower these effects, the vertical garden toolkit will be an affordable tool to people to live a sustainable lifestyle in urban area.
Definition in sustainability
The definition of vertical garden is that an architectural structure for planting and can be an intervention for green space in urban area with low quality air condition. In addition, this is to minimize environmental impact for sustainable living space.
In ancient time, it can be seen that vertical garden started from Hanging Gardens of Babylon.[4] From this, we can infer a fundamental concept from vertical appearance of them.
Vertical Garden is also called as green wall, in addition, considered as a kind of green roof concept and it should be addressed with vertical farming at different angle. For that reason, vertical farming concept is for future food crisis on an extension line of urban farming whereas I think that vertical garden, aside from agriculture, should be approached for deforestation and urbanization problem as a small endeavor that can be carry on by a person.[5]
Benefits for society
The benefits of plants are successful beyond just decoration. An idea that the greens as tools improve the environment has been engaged with society historically for a long time. Additionally, when we think the advantages of forest and mountain surrounded with trees, you could guess the effect of vertical garden.
A city itself is not sustainable because of the attributes of physical factors. In other words, urban infrastructure and buildings consists with concrete and asphalt that emit carbon dioxide and covered over soil for a flat footpath and road interrupt us from nature perfectly.
Given the situation, it could offer a green space as a small woodland in urban area. Effect of green nature has known through multimedia as basic human needs. BBC said that it improves mental and physical health.
Beth Murphy, information manager at the mental health charity Mind, said: “For people living busy lifestyles in densely populated areas, being able to get outdoors and access green space is a great way to escape the stresses of day-to-day life.”
“Our research has shown that 94% of people who took part in outdoors ‘green exercise’ said it benefited their mental health and can have huge impacts on physical health.”[6][7]
Procedure
I referred mainly the How-to-guide of vertical garden DIY article. After the articles were collected, I edited them according to a same subject like method of vertical garden, consideration. When I was researching about vertical garden, the research was concerned with general gardening. There are so much information that could not been organized during a few days. Thus, I intended to rely on visual information so that vertical gardens would be categorized as their shapes. When it comes to the house plants that suite for a vertical garden, I felt that I could not handle the immense volume of information because that might be within the academic disciplines. I used some articles of gardening experts. Hence, my toolkit for vertical garden could be a compact version.
Further research
Because I interested in deforestation, I intended to research about vertical forest. But I thought that it would be better to study a few knowledge of garden that stand vertically. Through this toolkit study, I could understand the engagement between society and green space made by the human. Environmental problem, especially deforestation, is declared with one accord that it is inevitable. The crisis might not be overcome because its scale of hyper-object by mass production. I heard that those cannot be solved by human endeavor. If really so, what if there is a hyper-object that gives a positive feedback to the natural environment? Or, could there be an aggressive solution for that? These are my question related with deforestation. Thus, I would like to research about vertical forest for Seoul.
References
[1] The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (2014) World Urbanization Prospects. Available at: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/ (Accessed: 25 April 2015).
[2] World Wide Fund for Nature (2015) Deforestation. Available at: http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/about_forests/deforestation/ (Accessed: 25 April 2015).
[3] Tatlow, D. (2015) Amazon soaking up less carbon as tree deaths rise. Available at: http://www.scidev.net/global/conservation/news/Amazon-climate-change.html (Accessed: 25 April 2015).
[4] Oh, K (2014) Vertical Garden. Available at: http://navercast.naver.com/contents.nhn?rid=178& contents_id=64164 (Accessed: 25 April 2015).
[5] Woodward, C. (2011) The age of flower towers. Available at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/03b0f876 -ea83-11e0-b0f5-00144feab49a.html#axzz3U7AIQ0R3 (Accessed: 25 April 2015).
[6] BBC (2013) Green spaces boosts wellbeing of urban dwellers – study. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22214070 (Accessed: 25 April 2015).
[7] Drummond, B. (2014) FORESTS. Available at: http://www.conservation.org/what/pages/ forests.aspx?gclid=Cj0KEQjw6tepBRDLqLnxouaY_pkBEiQAPIOiBgKZJ9OKLjQ201TfThtivHgKhKvb-uovLEGIrG3SO38aAj2f8P8HAQ (Accessed: 25 April 2015).
