The hanging gardens of Babylon were the inspiration for an architect's ambition to turn the city of Beirut into a "wonder forest".
Wassim Melki of StudioInvisible explained to Wired.co.uk that while the concept of rooftop gardens is far from new; he is proposing creating them "on a very large scale" throughout the city and its suburbs. And he is suggesting a simplified gardening approach to encourage the rooftop garden proliferation.
"Most conventional rooftop gardens are very complex," he explained. "They require a specific type of insulation and drainage, and a study should be conducted on the roof slab and how much weight it could support. Since many of the existing buildings are more than 50 years old, we are suggesting putting the trees in relatively large pots."
Melki adds that there is little if not no space in the city for creating new public green spaces, and "it's almost impossible to plant on the sidewalks or at the side of the roads". The solution is to take to the rooftops, argues the architect, and use the roofs of the 18,500 buildings in the city that are currently vacant. Says Melki: "If only one tree is planted on each, that's 18,500 more trees: which is the equivalent of Central Park in New York."
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The StudioInvisible team is currently working on a plan, which will be presented to the Municipal powers-that-be as well as the Ministry of the Environment at the end of this month.
In the meantime, the team are posting updates about the project on their Facebook page in a bid to get the Beirut population to go potty about plant pots; and turn their city green.
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