Hanging Gardens - Adventures in High-rise Horticulture

The Hanging Gardens project revisits the hanging gardens of Babylon to implement them on a house-hold level in contemporary Istanbul. The project stretches from generating visions and political proposals, on the large scale, to developing a methodology for simple DIY interventions on the lower scale. The main aims are to increase the green quality of urban environment, to resist interpassivity and to encourage individual food production. It is a “sustainable” project in relation to deep and systemic changes in the ways of thinking, living and producing our livelihood and local environment.

The project points out both the lack of public green in Istanbul and also the private green, which has a potential to be represented at the balconies, or rooftop spaces while instead mostly used as an extension of the living area or simply a storage room by totally adding it to the closed space of the flat.

The Hanging Gardens is a set of small change tools, conceptual and practical instruments that permit the enhancing of high-rise horticulture. These methods are reinterpreting vertical gardening for zero-cost applications and aim to introduce recycling in multiple aspects for horticulture in high-rise building apartments. The Hanging Garden DIY-manuals are frameworks and step-by-step proposals of how to grow a rich variety of edible vegetables in minimum gardening space – reclaimed from gravity by hanging outside the building facade (preferably by the kitchen window – easy to reach and sustain).

The aim of the Hanging Gardens is also to beautify and resist the carbon intense “ready-made” consumer culture by giving a helping hand to reduce some of the major urban threats to Istanbul, even with small steps and changes:

Traffic pollution due to food transport – localize production!
Electricity shortage in summer due to air conditioning  - cool the cityscape and facades with greens!
Summer water shortage – irrigate vegetables with gray water and water from air-condition units!

The project will engage in several experiments in high-rise horticulture. From growing in compost compound soil to total soilless gardening (hydroponics) – but focusing on easy DIY approaches recycling waste from average households.

Experiments will also be made in vertical gardening by using rock-wool and PVC felt to grow onto the house facade – both implementing a greener urban environment but also a way of adding shade and insulation to Turkish homes. 

The whole project will end up in a small copyleft book in English/Turkish with simple step-by-step methods as well as a cookbook with a few recipes reinterpreting the Ottoman cuisine applied for intra-urban gardening conditions for easy implementation and inspiration, aiming to enhance social learning and agricultural capabilities.

Download the poster here