The Vertical Garden
A Scientific and
Artistic approach by Patrick Blanc
Do plants really need
soil? No, they don't.....The soil is
merely nothing more than a mechanic support. Only water and the many minerals
dissolved in it are essential to plants, together with light and carbon dioxide
to conduct photosynthesis.
As a teenager, in the
late sixties, Patrick Blanc conceived the Vertical Garden as a biological filter
for his tropical aquarium. During his university years he visited the South
East Asian rainforests to observe his beloved aquatic Cryptocoryne species
growing in the shaded forest streams and then he decided to study tropical
botany. His Ph D, in 1978, concerned the growth habits of the plants of the
Aroid family (Anthurium, Philodendron, Monstera, Aglaonema, Cryptocoryne...).
In 1982, he joined the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) and his
research topic since that time concerns the adaptive strategies of the tropical
rainforest understory species. This was the subject of his State Thesis
(Doctorat ès Sciences) and he won the Botany prize from the French Academy of
Sciences in 1993.
During these years he was also developing his
Vertical Garden concept and finally patented it in 1988 and 1996. Consecutive
to his first realizations in the late eighties (especially at the Museum of
Science and Technology in Paris in 1986), he has been invited for the Chaumont International
Garden Festival in 1994. The success of his work was immediate and then the Contemporary
Art institutions considered he was an
artist and then they commissioned different permanent installations. In
2001, Andrée Putman invited Patrick for
a huge installation on a blind wall at the Pershing Hall hotel in Paris and
suddenly many famous architects have been interested by Patrick’s work. Now,
the closest collaborations are with Jean Nouvel and Herzog and De Meuron.
Besides these collaborations, Patrick Blanc now designs many projects by
himself.