Alive Structures: A Modern Concept in Gardenpolis Architecture

Abstract
From the hanging gardens of Babylon to the Parisian “worker gardens,” to the “community
gardens” of New York going through Muscovite “vegetable squares”, these new ideas, aware of
the emergency to reduce our fuel consumption and the necessity to modify our behavior facing
the climatic changes. Looking for a positive energetic assessment, the contemporary city aims
within fifteen years at producing cleanly and intensively more energy than it consumes. It
develops energy by biomass, photovoltaic cells, green walls, green roofs and other renewable
energies. The architecture has to be in the service of this new green issues and approaches.
The twentieth century began with a flood of idealistic manifests from architects extolling the
virtues of new building technologies to demater ialization and the loss of weight. Rarely did
prophetic designers foresee the negative effects of industrialization. For the modernist pioneers,
manufactured products were synonymous with liberty and unlimited opportunities. They never
imagined the devastating consequences of these artifacts on global warming, declining resources,
shrinking water supplies and overpopulation. A convincing argument for today would have to
question everything the early theories extolled. Green architecture is about this proce ss. It
advances architecture’s most compelling dialogue by confronting the environmental predictions
for the coming decade.