A Building That Breathes

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By Wendy Goodman
Published Oct 9, 2011

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Photographs by Nelson Kon/Courtesy of Triptyque

São Paulo
Project: Harmonia 57
Architects: Triptyque
Date: 2008

Developers, take note: This building of artists’ studios suggests a wholly different approach to the ecofriendly apartment block. The exterior concrete walls bloom with life, as plants are able to grow through a system of irrigation using recycled rainwater and groundwater. Not unlike Paris’s Pompidou Centre, the structure is, to a degree, turned inside out. Its veinlike water pipes become part of the architecture.

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