21. ROOFTOP POWER PLANT

You head out along a footbridge that leads to a rooftop garden. You find yourself on a green roof. Plants generally make our surroundings more pleasant, like all green spaces in the city. But on this future garden, the same plants do something else in addition: they generate electricity.

This Rooftop Power Plant is an illusion, but electricity generation via "battery plants" is a magical reality. A rootop garden has lots of upsides, such as air purification and temperature regulation. It cools the city in summertime and insulates from the cold in the wintertime, can harvest rainwater and improve human well-being and animal welfare. Imagine a green roof full of plants which, during the day, operate cooling fans and, during the night, provide light. Take your imagination even further … to a hanging garden capable of supplying enough electricity for the whole building underneath! Sit yourself down on the red pouffe under the sun umbrella and enjoy our garden with a view over Paris and a sustainable future.

DESIGNERS

Aleid WESTENBERG and Lucia LATENSTEIN, landscapers 
THE NETHERLANDS

Lucia Latenstein is Dutch by birth and a landscaper by profession. She began her working life as an events manager for companies. Well accustomed to creating, organising and putting "experiences" into practice, she first set about designing gardens back in 1998. She believes that entering a garden is an event in itself, and that a garden is a party! Since 2007, she has been living in a small village in Burgundy where she set up her business "Les parterres en kit", which sells ready-to-use flowerbeds. Perennials and flower bulbs are a particular favourite of hers. She hopes that green energy alternatives like "plant-batteries" will increasingly take the place of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. 

Aleid Westenberg was born in the Netherlands and lived in several countries as a child, including Denmark and India. In 1989, she opened her own garden design firm in Auckland, New Zealand. Before that, she studied "Landscape Design and Practice" at "The Auckland Polytechnic" and spent one year working for a renowned landscape architect. Since 1997 she has lived in the Hague (the Netherlands). She takes great delight in designing all kinds of different gardens for her clients. She works from the idea that a garden is an extension of the house - another living environment. She would like to decorate this "garden room" in a way that allows her clients to relax and unwind. Her respect for nature plays a key part in her choice of materials. Her belief is that greener, more sustainable ecology in cities is of the utmost importance in the future.