Imagine: where plants fly beyond the vertical garden

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Artist Lloyd Godman is at the forefront of a modern trend to bring an appreciation of the natural world into our structural domains. Buildings do not rest ‘above’ or ‘outside’ a landscape, separated from the surrounding environment. On the contrary, structures interact with the natural world as objects that cast shadows, consume resources and provide rich habitats for life.

Godman’s living, plant-based artworks reinforce the necessary connectedness of buildings and the wider environment. Not only do these artworks convey powerful messages and philosophies of sustainable and ethical physical interaction, but they also reach out beyond ideas to become part of the actual structure – as physical objects, Godman’s artworks are purifiers of the air as well as the soul, suppliers of colour as well as calmness, and filters of water as well as the human spirit.

...... it is highly unusual for an artist to forge new aesthetic, philosophical and architectural directions through his work; Godman, however, has managed to use his diminutive plants to convey global concepts, and in the process participate in a new wave of appreciation for plants in the built environment.

John Power 2011

Here is an insight into the remarkable applications of Tillandsias (air plants) as a means of integrating plants into architecture in a fully sustainable manner. It brings new directions to living architecture. Green walls ( vertical gardens ) and adaptation of biophilia into the built environment offers many advantages, but there can also be issues, like maintenance, water/fertilizer migration, microorganisms, plastics which are conveniently ignored. The use of Tillandsias eliminates many of these issues and allows new ways to merge plants and architecture. Plant sculptures that suspend and rotate on the wind, screens covered with plants that move over skylights, robotic gardens, tidal gardens on the facades of buildings, horizontal screens that offer shade and privacy are among the many possibilities. Since 2010, the ideas have been realized in the work of Lloyd Godman. Experiments see plants placed on high rise buildings at level 92, plants are salt tested in the ocean during a surfing session, plant sunscreens are created that can replace plastic sun sails.