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A Breathing Building is Growing in São Paulo

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Almost like a living thing, here is a building that  “breathes, sweats; grows new skin and modifies itself.”

The walls are thick and will be covered externally by a green layer that works like the skin of the structure.

Unlike the brick walls of an ivy-covered building, these porous concrete walls are actually impregnated with their growing plant cover.  They have large fist-sized pores, intended to be the growing medium for the vegetation. Then there is an inner skin that is shiny, smooth and non-porous.

The building will harvest rainwater to be used and reused to mist the plants growing in the porous organic concrete. Soil waters will be drained, treated and reused — forming a complex ecosystem within the building.

Currently the exterior pipelines that serve the whole building – as well as the pumps and the water treatment system – are pretty starkly visible on the outside walls, but as the plant growth matures, the pipes will be more integrated into it, embracing the “skin” almost like the veins and arteries of a body.

Designed by the French-Brazilian architecture firm Triptyque, Harmonia 57 is an office building in what appears to be the SoHo of São Paulo:

“The project in Harmonia Street is located in a neighborhood in the west side of São Paulo, where artistic life and creativity penetrates easily, where galleries and walls are mixed up, functioning as a stage for new expression forms.”

It will be interesting to see how well this novel idea works, once the exterior planting has taken hold.