The book “The Age of Man. The world created by us "
Hello! We have released a wonderful new Diana Ackerman :
People "have mastered 75% of the land surface, created many truly wonderful industrial and medical inventions, lit up the entire planet." For us, nature is not a temple, but a workshop; we have inhabited the biosphere with our favorite species of plants and animals, many of which are invasive; we even changed the climate, putting our own existence at risk. However, we are aware of our own destructive inclinations and can boast stunning creative achievements. We collect the DNA of endangered species in the “frozen ark”, teach orangutans to deal with ipads, create high-tech wearable devices and even artificial species that may someday surpass us. Author Diana Ackerman, who has a rare gift to explain advanced science to nonprofessional readers in an accessible way, organizes an amazing tour of the surrounding reality, introduces a lot of people who define the development of modern science, ideas that set the vector of civilization development before our eyes, and maybe save her.
As a child, Patrick Blanc loved to visit the doctor. In the reception there was a six-foot-long aquarium that teased him with its colorful tropical fish and velvety green plants that swayed in the water and attracted them like hands. For an urban boy who grew up in the suburbs of Paris, the aquarium embodied a piece of paradise. Putting his ear to a small box attached to one of its walls, the boy could hear how the water, mixed with bubbles, runs through the tubes and passes through the filter. The hydraulics and the very technical construction of the aquarium interested him not less than the fish themselves, and it took him not too much time to assemble his own small aquarium at home. For some time he also took care of astrildah birds with coral beaks, letting them fly on a flat on Thursday and Sunday morning.
Patrick became a teenager, and his curiosity of a wanderer was transferred from aquariums and birds to aquatic plants; then, at the age of 15, he jumped over the waves and found himself in the moist and shady edges of the planet, known to us as the tropics. During a school trip to the tropical forests of Thailand and Malaysia, he realized for the first time that “plants can shoot at any height — they do not have to grow out of the ground”.
')
Today, the green walls, which are abundantly refreshing with the vegetation of the city around the world, owe their design or at least were inspired by Patrick's ecological vision: they attract hummingbirds, other birds and butterflies - and with each new season they change.
Among the personal favorites of Blanc himself is the cult incarnation of the “green city” concept: the magnificent Museum on the Quai Branly (or Qué Branley Museum) in Paris, opened in 2006 and called by many “a revelation in the world of botany”. Meadows woven from a multitude of textures are climbing up the front of a 13,000-square-foot building, and more than half of this area is living plants. The rest is represented by the windows, and the result is a huge checkered mossy and fragrant breathable wall with fleshy leaves, soft to the touch and trembling from the birds crawling in it.
Covering the facade of the building with plants in the widest range to reflect the diversity of cultures that world artists represented in the museum belong to, Blanc focused on a fantastic potpourri of what grows in the temperate climate of North America, Europe, South America, Asia and Africa. He would have included Oceania on this list, but tropical plants would not survive the Parisian winters, and the facade, which is partly vegetal tapestry, partially hidden lagoons and at the same time does not contain soil at all, is designed for many years: it will tease the senses of Paris and forming a 40-foot-high and 650-foot-wide ecosystem in the middle of the city with all its stone and steel objects from scratch, at the same time helping to purify the air and eliminate carbon dioxide. On warm days, flowers bloom, butterflies flutter, and birds rest or nest in dense bushes. Sometimes it even seems that you are about to see a tiny deer peeking out from behind mossy hummocks. Our horizontal life inside the premises makes the consciousness more flat, and some administrative buildings and offices are already starting to plant vertical gardens on their walls: they can be seen from the window while working, and this blurs the line between the world inside and outside the room.
How does this tall garden on the north side of the building withstand the icy winds that run over the Seine? It is here that Blanc’s experience in the field of botany and his research is indispensable. This living wall is frost-resistant, as it has chosen hundreds of plants characteristic of the undergrowth, which, according to its research, are able to withstand direct light and wind in large quantities.
“When I think of geyher,” he says, referring to the family of stone-sawed plants, which also includes red and American geyher, blooming with small delicate flowers (and their leaves are like palms with very long fingers), “I always think about how their leaves appear from under the snow in April, fresh and not spoiled by frost, along the sheer hillsides in the shade of giant Californian sequoias.
Blanc works with a palette of deep saturated greens represented in dozens of shades and half tones, from asparagus and fern to forest and "praying mantis" green, and among its working textures everything is from matte to fluffy, spongy and glossy. They all look different depending on the time of day or time of year, their age, current clouds, mists curling along the river, rush hours on the roads, light refractions at dusk. We perceive the colors of the retina receptors of our eyes, and they mix and endlessly transform, as if we met them directly in the forest. Blanc prefers leaves to flowers, does not pay attention to creeping shoots - and is very sensitive to the architecture of the leaves. Thousands of individual plants, from which he weaves his canvases, grow leaves of various shapes: tousled, pointed, stellate, toothed, oval, sickle-shaped, rounded, drop-shaped, dull, heart-shaped, pointed, etc. Some grow upwards, while how others look down, some thrash or exquisitely bloom, and others make new shoots or try to separate from a single web. Knowing the habits and habits of each plant, he draws a map of plantings from a variety of segments, similar to amazing fingerprints or a picture for coloring with numbered cells, and each segment is a specific plant, whose name is indicated right there in Latin.
“This is a picture first,” explains Blanc. - Then she appears texture and depth.
As in any art, which is based on science, not one muse is at the source of his inspiration. Plants are drawn on paper, because of what each design at first really looks like a picture. Then this work of art is transformed into a sensual sculpture of tangible, biological and undercut shapes and colors. Leaves, flowers, stems dance in the air a kind of slow ballet. Yes, Blanc, to a certain extent, gives them choreography, but the whole ensemble will sooner or later give up natural improvisation - not least depending on the weather. Frogs, birds and insects gradually grow roots in plants, and the wall is filled with a chorus of croaking, chirping and buzzing; you can predict some tunes, and the rest - all jazz variations on the theme.
Despite the fact that the plants are naturally curling, clear edges and lines give the final work a tinge of sensual elegance and no mess. The wall looks volume and intricate, but not cluttered. Plants can not be fully called wild, but they grow and bloom in a unique way. In this sense, it is even more like linear chaos — deliberate, self-contained, carefully measured, and masterfully embodied. And free for everyone!
Practical botany, hydraulics, physics and sopromat constitute the necessary backbone of knowledge for such art. Thousands of individual plants are manually placed in special pockets on a flat felt canvas stretched over a rigid frame; it will be fertilized and irrigated according to the rain principle - irrigation from a pipe hidden at the top of the structure with certain intervals of time. Despite the absence of soil, the plants quickly take root and flourish, covering both the surface of the felt and the pipe. The overall effect is a big mouthful of wildlife that may be stuck in the throat in the solar plexus area. This is a garden that can only be welcomed by standing, at eye level, like another person. He invites you to touch him, inhale his smell. Look up - it rises four floors above you like a vast undergrowth, but not a giant from a fairy tale. Directly close to himself, he creates his own microclimate, here it is shady and quite humid; He suggests: Stand closer and tilt your head back, looking at the dizzying diversity of flora. Skillfully balancing on the thinnest line between taming and free will, he seems both timid and indomitable.
More information about the book can be found on the publisher's website.
Table of contents
Excerpt
For readers of this blog 25% discount coupon - Age of Man
This discount also applies to a series of books about science: New Science and Pop Science.
People "have mastered 75% of the land surface, created many truly wonderful industrial and medical inventions, lit up the entire planet." For us, nature is not a temple, but a workshop; we have inhabited the biosphere with our favorite species of plants and animals, many of which are invasive; we even changed the climate, putting our own existence at risk. However, we are aware of our own destructive inclinations and can boast stunning creative achievements. We collect the DNA of endangered species in the “frozen ark”, teach orangutans to deal with ipads, create high-tech wearable devices and even artificial species that may someday surpass us. Author Diana Ackerman, who has a rare gift to explain advanced science to nonprofessional readers in an accessible way, organizes an amazing tour of the surrounding reality, introduces a lot of people who define the development of modern science, ideas that set the vector of civilization development before our eyes, and maybe save her.In the green canopy of a green man
As a child, Patrick Blanc loved to visit the doctor. In the reception there was a six-foot-long aquarium that teased him with its colorful tropical fish and velvety green plants that swayed in the water and attracted them like hands. For an urban boy who grew up in the suburbs of Paris, the aquarium embodied a piece of paradise. Putting his ear to a small box attached to one of its walls, the boy could hear how the water, mixed with bubbles, runs through the tubes and passes through the filter. The hydraulics and the very technical construction of the aquarium interested him not less than the fish themselves, and it took him not too much time to assemble his own small aquarium at home. For some time he also took care of astrildah birds with coral beaks, letting them fly on a flat on Thursday and Sunday morning.
Patrick became a teenager, and his curiosity of a wanderer was transferred from aquariums and birds to aquatic plants; then, at the age of 15, he jumped over the waves and found himself in the moist and shady edges of the planet, known to us as the tropics. During a school trip to the tropical forests of Thailand and Malaysia, he realized for the first time that “plants can shoot at any height — they do not have to grow out of the ground”.
')
Today, the green walls, which are abundantly refreshing with the vegetation of the city around the world, owe their design or at least were inspired by Patrick's ecological vision: they attract hummingbirds, other birds and butterflies - and with each new season they change.
Among the personal favorites of Blanc himself is the cult incarnation of the “green city” concept: the magnificent Museum on the Quai Branly (or Qué Branley Museum) in Paris, opened in 2006 and called by many “a revelation in the world of botany”. Meadows woven from a multitude of textures are climbing up the front of a 13,000-square-foot building, and more than half of this area is living plants. The rest is represented by the windows, and the result is a huge checkered mossy and fragrant breathable wall with fleshy leaves, soft to the touch and trembling from the birds crawling in it.
Covering the facade of the building with plants in the widest range to reflect the diversity of cultures that world artists represented in the museum belong to, Blanc focused on a fantastic potpourri of what grows in the temperate climate of North America, Europe, South America, Asia and Africa. He would have included Oceania on this list, but tropical plants would not survive the Parisian winters, and the facade, which is partly vegetal tapestry, partially hidden lagoons and at the same time does not contain soil at all, is designed for many years: it will tease the senses of Paris and forming a 40-foot-high and 650-foot-wide ecosystem in the middle of the city with all its stone and steel objects from scratch, at the same time helping to purify the air and eliminate carbon dioxide. On warm days, flowers bloom, butterflies flutter, and birds rest or nest in dense bushes. Sometimes it even seems that you are about to see a tiny deer peeking out from behind mossy hummocks. Our horizontal life inside the premises makes the consciousness more flat, and some administrative buildings and offices are already starting to plant vertical gardens on their walls: they can be seen from the window while working, and this blurs the line between the world inside and outside the room.
How does this tall garden on the north side of the building withstand the icy winds that run over the Seine? It is here that Blanc’s experience in the field of botany and his research is indispensable. This living wall is frost-resistant, as it has chosen hundreds of plants characteristic of the undergrowth, which, according to its research, are able to withstand direct light and wind in large quantities.
“When I think of geyher,” he says, referring to the family of stone-sawed plants, which also includes red and American geyher, blooming with small delicate flowers (and their leaves are like palms with very long fingers), “I always think about how their leaves appear from under the snow in April, fresh and not spoiled by frost, along the sheer hillsides in the shade of giant Californian sequoias.
Blanc works with a palette of deep saturated greens represented in dozens of shades and half tones, from asparagus and fern to forest and "praying mantis" green, and among its working textures everything is from matte to fluffy, spongy and glossy. They all look different depending on the time of day or time of year, their age, current clouds, mists curling along the river, rush hours on the roads, light refractions at dusk. We perceive the colors of the retina receptors of our eyes, and they mix and endlessly transform, as if we met them directly in the forest. Blanc prefers leaves to flowers, does not pay attention to creeping shoots - and is very sensitive to the architecture of the leaves. Thousands of individual plants, from which he weaves his canvases, grow leaves of various shapes: tousled, pointed, stellate, toothed, oval, sickle-shaped, rounded, drop-shaped, dull, heart-shaped, pointed, etc. Some grow upwards, while how others look down, some thrash or exquisitely bloom, and others make new shoots or try to separate from a single web. Knowing the habits and habits of each plant, he draws a map of plantings from a variety of segments, similar to amazing fingerprints or a picture for coloring with numbered cells, and each segment is a specific plant, whose name is indicated right there in Latin.
“This is a picture first,” explains Blanc. - Then she appears texture and depth.
As in any art, which is based on science, not one muse is at the source of his inspiration. Plants are drawn on paper, because of what each design at first really looks like a picture. Then this work of art is transformed into a sensual sculpture of tangible, biological and undercut shapes and colors. Leaves, flowers, stems dance in the air a kind of slow ballet. Yes, Blanc, to a certain extent, gives them choreography, but the whole ensemble will sooner or later give up natural improvisation - not least depending on the weather. Frogs, birds and insects gradually grow roots in plants, and the wall is filled with a chorus of croaking, chirping and buzzing; you can predict some tunes, and the rest - all jazz variations on the theme.
Despite the fact that the plants are naturally curling, clear edges and lines give the final work a tinge of sensual elegance and no mess. The wall looks volume and intricate, but not cluttered. Plants can not be fully called wild, but they grow and bloom in a unique way. In this sense, it is even more like linear chaos — deliberate, self-contained, carefully measured, and masterfully embodied. And free for everyone!
Practical botany, hydraulics, physics and sopromat constitute the necessary backbone of knowledge for such art. Thousands of individual plants are manually placed in special pockets on a flat felt canvas stretched over a rigid frame; it will be fertilized and irrigated according to the rain principle - irrigation from a pipe hidden at the top of the structure with certain intervals of time. Despite the absence of soil, the plants quickly take root and flourish, covering both the surface of the felt and the pipe. The overall effect is a big mouthful of wildlife that may be stuck in the throat in the solar plexus area. This is a garden that can only be welcomed by standing, at eye level, like another person. He invites you to touch him, inhale his smell. Look up - it rises four floors above you like a vast undergrowth, but not a giant from a fairy tale. Directly close to himself, he creates his own microclimate, here it is shady and quite humid; He suggests: Stand closer and tilt your head back, looking at the dizzying diversity of flora. Skillfully balancing on the thinnest line between taming and free will, he seems both timid and indomitable.
More information about the book can be found on the publisher's website.
Table of contents
Excerpt
For readers of this blog 25% discount coupon - Age of Man
This discount also applies to a series of books about science: New Science and Pop Science.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/396745/
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