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International

Chesa Futura - St. Moritz • Photo: Evelina Rioukhina

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon by LarsRune

Vertical Forest-Bosco Verticale.
Render courtesy Boeri Studio.

Future Cities:

Let’s all remember Babylon

Marina Bay Sands with the top deck park.
By Ash Charlton and Evelina Rioukhina Photo courtesy Erwin Soo

The buildings in cities of future – how will World Heritage Site, and are a monument to decadence and conspicuous display – to this hanging gardens are the highest in the world,
they develop? Will they continue to grow in the Bahá`í faith. They are very much a ‘built’ day, Rastafarians use the term ‘Babylon’ to sitting atop the 56 floor of the glamorous
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height in megacities, will they grow in width space, with 19 terraces, representing the Báb refer to ungodly society. These green building Singapore Marina Bay Sands buildings, a
to include rural areas, or will the future of and his first disciples, all planted with trees projects conspicuously display their green 12,400m oasis of gardens and trees with
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our cities be “The Line”? Here are some ideas and flowers and connected by over 1,500 steps. credentials in an opulently Babylonian style jogging and walking areas. The park is not
and possibilities to inform our choices. The whole structure takes up a kilometer of the – none more than Stefano Boeri’s Vertical just an astonishing showpiece, it was awarded
hillside’s height, making it the tallest hanging Forest in Milan. the prestigious Green Mark Gold award for
Readers of a certain age and background may garden in the world. sustainability. Sadfie says, “Marina Bay Sands
remember the Seven Wonders of the Ancient The Vertical Forest’s hanging parks are not is really more than a building project; it’s a
World, one of the many deeply Eurocentric The fascination with hanging gardens also added to the building, as in the Namba parks, microcosm of a city rooted in Singapore’s
lists of achievements we had to memorize as helps us appreciate Namba Parks in Osaka, but are integral to it. Planted on transparent culture, climate, and contemporary life. Our
children. Most mysterious of these were the Japan. These are 128 terraced gardens from terraces, trees appear to ‘hang’, and even climb challenge was to create a vital public place
Hanging Gardens, said to have been built in ground level to 10 metres, but built in and up, the apartment tower blocks. In total, at the district-urban scale, in other words,
the ancient city of Babylon, near present-day around a huge skyscraper. This is a very about 2.5 hectares of forest wrap around the to address the issue of megascale and invent
Hillah, Babil province, in Iraq. These may modern interpretation of a hanging garden, building like a huge fur coat. In such close an urban landscape that would work at the
never have existed as anything more than a providing much-needed green space in the proximity to residents, the foliage not only human scale.”
poetic fancy, but even though they are the only heart of the city. All modern city planners performs the usual green functions, but also
Wonder whose existence is disputed they may know the importance of a city’s green ‘lungs’, creates a micro-climate with its own shade, However, recent experiences of pandemic and
Ash Charlton is have inspired more extreme green projects providing oxygen, spaces for well-being and, humidity, CO absorption, noise-reduction, lockdown have given us new perspectives. It
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a writer, editor, than any real garden could ever have done. given how cities are major net generators of and filtration of urban dust particles. is hard to see these floating spaces without
consultant and If it were not for the mythical Hanging Gardens heat, vital cooling for their citizens. thinking of people packed together on planes
freelance trainer of Babylon the magnificently constructed Perhaps the most Babylonian conception yet, to go and see them, journeying there crammed
who has worked terraced gardens in Haifa might not be It is telling that the site of the fabled ancient however, is that of Moshe Sadfie, a Canadian into public transport, then crowding into
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with the UN for called “Hanging Gardens of Baha’I”. These Hanging Gardens should be Babylon. In the architect, who actually hung a garden atop the energy-expensive elevators to get to the 56
over 15 years. Hanging Gardens are listed as a UNESCO Bible, Babylon is associated with opulence, three tallest skyscrapers in Singapore. These floor. It has become suddenly possible to do

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