Greenroofs.comConnecting the Planet + Living Architecture
Additional Resources
The Hotel Gaia-B3 is located at Carrera 15 con Calle 88, Costado Oriental, Bogota, Colombia; 57 (1) 691-8488; www.hotelesb3.com. See the informative and entertaining 5:36 video Paisajismo Urbano en Colombia-Gaia-B3 about the hotel’s living wall construction process in Spanish, and see the project profile from their website in Spanish and English. For additional information regarding the greenwall project, visit http://www.paisajismourbano.com or contact Alex Ormad of Paisajismo Urbano at: alexverticalecosystems@gmail.com or paisajismo-urbano@hotmail.com.
B3 Hotels are a Colombian-born brand of select service hotels located in key markets throughout the country for the budget conscious business traveler.
Completed on March 1, 2012, more than 25,000 plants representing 55 different species cover 400m2 and 8 floors of the Hotel Gaia-B3 wall in Bogotá, Colombia. The project involved much research and planning; design through implementation took approximately two and a half months. As always, prior investigation of appropriate plants was conducted by the Spanish firm Paisajismo Urbano in local tropical forest jungles, resulting in 40% local native plants being used.
The system will allow local species to self-pollinate, which will add to its already high biodiversity. And, as in all of Paisajismo Urbano’s work, the hydroponic Vertical Ecosystem also carries biological nutrients and pest repellent which is recycled through the remotely controlled irrigation system.
To the delight of its owners, the Hotel Gaia-B3 vertical garden has become quite popular in Bogotá and has turned into its own tourist attraction. This magnificent vertical garden was implemented thanks to Paisajismo Urbano’s new partner and distributor, GRONCOL, in Bogotá.
Paisajismo Urbano, with a responsibility towards the conservation of native plants, began to collaborate with different official entities and botanical gardens in 2011.
“Our intention is that our vertical ecosystems make ever more use of native plants, principally plants which grow on walls and mountain slopes, with the intention of improving the biodiversity of the botanical market, seeing as this market is getting ever smaller due to commercial interests.
“Paisajismo Urbano is establishing a collaboration agreement with different official entities and botanical gardens, who are helping us with the identification, sampling and propagation of native species in the different countries we visit with the intention that in the near future we will be able to make our vertical ecosystems with 90% native plants due to the collaboration and support of scientific studies,” states Ignacio Solano, founder of Paisajismo Urbano.
