As the temperature drops in the Northern Hemisphere, cold outdoor spaces are overcome with frost, ice, and snow, and we find ourselves rushing from one heated indoor environment to the next, less willing or less able to stop and appreciate the natural world around us.
Apart from dragging a spruce or fir tree inside and dressing it up in yuletide costume, we tend to leave the real natural world to its own seasonal devices until it reemerges in Spring. However, by inviting the positive effects of plant life into our homes, we can improve both our mental health and the air we breathe by filling them with peace and joy all year round, not just at Christmas.
At any time of year, meanwhile, residents in high-rise apartment buildings without gardens miss out on a close relationship with the Earth. This feeling of connection can’t be faked by lining shelves with pot plants but requires surrounding greenery in which to fully envelop oneself with the sights and scents of nature. Here are some of the ways apartment buildings in Europe provide residents with private and community garden spaces to lose themselves in, even just for a moment.
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Brazilian Interiors: Projects with Interior GardensApartments with Enclosed Garden Balconies
An apartment gifted with the outdoor space of a terrace or balcony can be filled with potted plants, affording it a green scene that blends well with the existence of natural light and fresh air – depending on the building’s proximity to other buildings and main roads. However, the open fourth wall often remains a dismantling reminder of the space’s distance from the ground.
At both the Urban Garden and Baltasar apartment buildings, for example, a wire rope facade is laid over the edge of the balconies, allowing a vertical garden to grow up and across, surrounding the space. The natural cycle of greenery means that the shade-providing plants are at their largest number when the sun is at its hottest and shade is most welcome.
Alternatively, the Remodelling of the White Towers apartments uses the iconic building’s curved outer form to draw sinuous glass partitions between outdoors and indoors, giving residents the ability to see out while looking in, and vice-versa. With this and the inclusion of indoor features such as seating and a bathtub, the technically outdoor space feels like just another interior.
Apartments with Balcony Gardens
Urban Garden / Ioizou Architects + Associates
Baltasar Building / Santa Cruz Arquitectura
Remodeling and Rethinking White Towers / STUDIO.NOJU
Apartments that Segregate Internal Spaces to Imitate Outdoor Balconies
Balconies are often too small to feel like actual garden spaces, as architects do not want to sacrifice space that could otherwise be more useful indoors. And even in apartments where the balcony terrace does borrow a portion of the indoor floor plan, such as the original layout of the OH! House, for example, the light and summery effect provided can be restricted with interior walls blocking its way. In its remodeling, Laura Ortín Arquitectura decided to ‘extend the terrace with a curved sliding balcony,’ as the architects explain. By opening up the layout and combining the main living space with an additional neighboring room, the new corner balcony entrance fills the whole apartment with the atmosphere of summer.
Meanwhile, at the Joan Blanques apartment, a renovation by Allaround Lab included using a gallery with a raised tile floor and integrated planters at the apartment’s edge as a winter garden, working ‘as a heat collector in the colder months and as a terrace in the warmer ones,’ suggest the architects.
Apartments with Balconies Borrowed From Interior Space
OH! House / Laura Ortín Arquitectura
Renovation of Joan Blanques apartment / Allaround Lab
Apartments with Internal Terrarium Gardens
While balconies and terraces are the gateways of natural light and fresh air at the edge of an apartment’s floor plan, by positioning garden space in the center of a layout instead, the refreshing elements are dispersed more equally. For example, the 54 Social Housing project provides 54 residences across two perpendicular three-story buildings. Where residences are provided with a private garden on the ground floor and terraces at the mid-level, those on the upper floor have interior garden spaces at their core, aiding ventilation and solar capture throughout.
Meanwhile, at this Public Housing project, the positions are flipped, with apartments on the ground floor given direct access to interior gardens at the center, and those above served by the bioclimatic atriums’ light and warmth in winter and ventilation in summer. With no natural access to water, the sustainability of the vegetation in the covered inner courtyards is ensured by reusing rainwater from the building’s roof and storing it in an underground cistern.
Apartments with Central Interior Gardens
54 Social Housing in Inca, Illes Balears / Joan Josep Fortuny Giró + Alventosa Morell Arquitectes
Public Housing in Platja D'En Bossa / 08014 arquitectura
Apartment Buildings with All-Weather Community Indoor Courtyards
When apartment buildings are built around shared private garden courtyards, they encourage residents to form tight-knit communities where there are always people to sit with and talk to, and for younger residents to play together, all within the safe confines of an enclosed space. However, when the weather is allowed to have its say on these outdoor environments, the negative sight of the lonely spaces’ enforced emptiness serves both as a symbol and prediction of a disconnected and insular community.
By protecting its central courtyard from both typical winter and summer weather, the Baró Tower Building uses its bioclimatic atrium to provide residents with a community courtyard they can use all year round. Meanwhile, at the Paseo Mallorca 15 Apartments, every time residents enter the building they pass through a ‘cool oasis of vegetation and calm’ as architects OHLAB describe the building’s inner courtyard, which functions as ‘an interior lung that connects upwards to landscaped terraces’ above.
Apartment Buildings with Sheltered Courtyard Gardens
Baró Tower Housing / DATAAE + Maira Arquitectes + Narch
Paseo Mallorca 15 Apartments / OHLAB
Find these projects with Interior Gardens in this ArchDaily folder created by the author.
