Focusing on the UK and the Middle-East
I’ve just put up a revamped article on vertical hydroponics http://www.marklaurence.com/articles/vertical_hydroponics.html which I first published on the Biotecture website. I put it here because it’s relevant – even accounting for commercial bias – to the understanding of urban greening. Actually, it’s not biased; my trialling and efforts simply showed that hydroponics work better, are more
I have three events at which I am speaking during the next two months, with a couple of other possibilities under discussion. Talks revolve around aspects of vertical greening for urban sustainability; for more info, see http://www.marklaurence.com/events.html
I have this concept going on in my mind (first wrote about it in 2007) about the exterior surface of buildings being like a living membrane or “biomembrane” (a term for the exterior surface of a cell), and having direct interactions between the internal and external building space, regulating such things as temperature, humidity, air
I’ve just posted up all my favourite old articles from my old site “the Design of Gardens”, which was always about more than just gardens! You can find articles on the following link and I will adjust the menu at right to show these. www.marklaurence.com/mainpage.html
Having just written the post on Dubai, we go from the ridiculous to the sublime… my summerhouse, is of course, far more significant! Weeks of heavy rain and flooding have proved one thing – it doesn’t leak! You haven’t seen it yet with all doors and windows, so here it is: Needless to say, it’s
I recently spend some time in Dubai on business, looking to put green walls up there on a big scale. It’s a crazy place, I’d guess rivalled by few cities in the world for sheer extravagance (Los Vegas perhaps), and by none in the world for the speed of its emergence – 20 years ago
I watched a programme recently on BBC4 about Glastonbury “after hours” by Julien Temple, looking at the fringe areas of the festival, areas with names like Shangri-La, Arcadia, Block 9, the Unfair Ground, Lost Vagueness etc. All this alternative self-expression, borne out of the likes of Archaos and the traveller movement; dreads and drugs writ
I’ve just posted up an article on edible landscapes, which originally appeared on my old site, thedesignodgardens.com. I want to gradually update and re-write some of my better stuff from there, so this is a start and an important one, for it shows the direct link between gardens and sustainability – that S word… you
So in one of those typically rain-drenched weeks (Jubilee week, no less), I decided to take time off and build a summerhouse. Well, you have to be an optimist, don’t you? I had already built a deck to front it over the winter, from some oak planking I had left over from one of my
Yesterday I introduced my fedge and polytunnel. Well, the first of these might be new to you; it’s a conservation term, used to describe an artificial hedge made from brushwood cuttings. I have quite a few willow in the garden which hadn’t been pollarded for a few years, so when I did them in March