From Ornament to Building Material: Revisiting the Aesthetics and Function of Green Architecture

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, we have been witnessing a persistent presence of greenery in architecture, in its most extensive application, with diverse ranges of technological sophistication, fruition, maintenance, form, and expression. The article focuses on the current use of vegetation in architecture, examining its expressive, artistic, and spatial qualities beyond environmental performances. Accordingly, the innovative interpretation of greenery is addressed within the current resurfacing debate over ornament, its aesthetic and semantic outcome, and its interaction with the inhabitants. Attention is directed at identifying recent design approaches towards nature and artifice, from the building interior to its adjacent urban space, with the aim of highlighting novel paths towards the articulation of spatial and technological systems, opening up multidisciplinary research towards new concepts of symbiosis between the natural and the artificial.