A Hill With a House on the Top: Designed by Beijing-based MAD Architects, the lush Gardenhouse complex in Los Angeles offers 18-units with dedicated parking and personal elevator, but concierge and valet services comparable to a first-class hotel. Abitare, Jan. 3, 2021
The ecological lifestyle becomes a fiction of symbolic consumption that doesn’t actually benefit the environment or society. Compared to a household living in the rural countryside, surrounded by relatively undisturbed nature, the growing fashion for planted buildings suggest a kind of virtue-signaling that doesn’t quite live up to its advertising. Yet energy codes in Los Angeles and California are robust for new construction, providing an alibi for their greenwashed symbolism, and on the level of expression, buildings with living walls are resonant billboards for sustainable architecture.