World Architecture Festival 2014 - Moshe Safdie, Safdie Architects

Talk on "Skyrise Greenery: towards a private and a shared garden for every high-rise resident".

I'm giving a talk tomorrow for the Institute of Landscape Architects. The title is "Skyrise Greenery: towards a private and a shared garden for every high-rise resident".

My talk will be two parts: I will first cover a bit about what I have learned about "Skyrise Greenery" based mainly on the study tours that I have made in the last few years to Singapore (where the term was coined), the talks I have attended, books that I have read and people I have talked to. The story is I think a relevant one for Malaysia. As a city-state, its small neighbour has had to grapple with the problems of the scarcity of land from its very start. Slowly but surely with continuing population growth,and urbanization, Malaysian cities are facing the same problem of the escalating price of land. More and more people will surely have to live in high-rise buildings. How to provide affordable quality housing in the urban centres is a challenge that  has to be answered.

In the second part of my talk I will present an idea that I am currently working on: its the notion that it is possible to work "towards a private and a shared garden" for every  resident in a new type of high-rise housing; and that this high-rise housing could be "affordable" ( as defined by the Malaysian government). It is perhaps an ambitious aim, but I hope to be able to convince the audience that it is possible. At the very least I hope that many will agree with me that the idea of skyrise greenery will be more common in the future, and it worth their while to widen their expertise into this field.