Net-Materials

Topographical contours. The body belongs to the earth as the building belongs to the earth..

Reinsertion of local landscapes into the city:

Looking to different neighbouhoods in any city, mean activities could be mapped and linked to open plazas, skeleton infrastructures and aerial gardens (forests). The idea is to generate new identities inside the city, between the citizens, the traditional natural species and cultivations, and the education that the local knowlegde and the global media can bring. In each neigbourhood, could be implemented new structures with the funtion of becoming a body (building-garden) inside of a body (city-machine).


From left clockwise: 1.The new catalysts are bodies with tubes. 2. With skin wrinkles. 3. They belong to the earth, incrementing the earth surface.

The idea of the multifuntional garden: Ecological Niches (Gills Clement)

Utopia is linked with ecology: If there is one only specie of any plant in your garden, the opportunnity of growing a bean is impossible. Diversity is linked not only in the diversity of species, but too in their behaviours. Mixture. A tree is not an individual, it is a linked community. One tree alone is a gardens that doesn’t need maintenance, without watering. In abandoned places is where diversity is, not in the mono-cultivations. These are the genetic pools where life is generated. “The horse is generating a mint garden, because he doesnt like the mint” (Gilles Clement: From the Garden in Motion to the Third Landscape, AAIR, February 20, 2007). Diversity is surprise.

We should liberate as much space as we consume through the material construction of the project, making compatible the program with the preservation and multiplication of the landscape (social and/or natural landscapes). We should abandon the romantic relationship between looking, nature and space, and realise that the landscape is not what is in front of us, but what is around us.

Nature Restauration: Permaculture (Bill Mollison)

To let the building be a part of the machine, we inject new natural elements that fertilise the soil of some plots in the city, generating valleys. We re-source the energy from above: electricity from the roof and facades (solar energy), and water from rain that is collected through the valley. Never again do we have to re-source our elements from under the cities, but rather from the sky.


Palace, 2008. Funnel collectiors and pot cultivations (non-digging): When the plants have grown to their point-of-sale size, they can be removed in their pots and sold immediately. The larger pots remain in the field to be reused. This system allows growers to offset labour costs associated with planting and re-planting in the field with a significant initial investment..


Palace, 2008. Fertilising valleys: Filtrations of water excess, pots on ground, hanging pots and funnels. Pilars from the sky to the ground.

Another solution for cultivating:

“A growroom: A growroom, or grow room, is a room of any size where plants are grown under controlled conditions. The reasons for utilizing a growroom are countless. Some seek to avoid the criminal repercussions of growing illicit cultivars, others simply have no alternative to indoor growing. They can be grown with the use of artificial light, sunlight, or a combination of the two. A grow room will often become excessively hot (relative to temperature range ideals for plant growth), due to the heat generated by the high power lamps; the use of supplemental ventilation fan is often necessitated.” (Sourced from Wikipedia).

Hydroponics: Hydroponics or agricultural hydroponics is a method used to cultivate plants using mineral solutions instead of agricultural land. Plants can grow with only the mineral solution or in a neutral medium such as sand, gravel or tissues.