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Plants in buildings and biotecture
 
 

                   Here we can see the result of one of the more popular Hundertwasser buildings, these are two pictures of the Hundertwasser house (1977-1986) in Vienna Austria where we see unusual shapes complementing beautiful colors complementing vegetation.
 
 

                "...lowering of the ambiant temperature around buildings...reduction of the overall urban heat island effect..."
                "Studies have shown that vertical plant cover on exposed wall surfaces improves the energy efficiency of the wall by up to 8% partly by the pockets of air trapped and partly by preventing rain from filling the air voids in the building façade."    Ken Yeang

           click on banner for link
 
 
 
 
 
 

                "...The significant advances have come as a result of the consideration of the leaf as a living solar collector ( probably the best that there will ever be ) . This 'vegetative' solar collector orientates itself optimally to correspond with the diurnal and annual path of the sun..."  Rudolph Doernach
 
 

  in summer, the evergreen leaf is raised to correspond with the high angle of the sun, allowing cooling air to enter between plants and building

in winter, leaves are lowered in accordance with the low sun angle, creating an insulating sheath of stationary air around the building

moisture to be kept away from the building as far as possible; thus no evaporative cooling in winter

               from the Doernach webpage

examples of pleaching from the Doernach webpage
 
 

again...a  link to a Hundertwasser webpage, a Doernach link and the Yeang one