Flying Garden
Spatial and temporal characteristics for a sustainable colonization process

Tomas Saraceno's ongoing project "Air-Port-City" proposes clusters of amorphous kinetic structures hovering in the sky like weightless clouds. There, people can meet, converse, even live and work in spaces created by semitransparent membranes. Unlimited spatial expansion and movement attempt to change the economy of real estate and to open new discourses about property values. Consequent to his visionary air-architecture, Saraceno has patented a new skin for solar "Lighter-Than-Air" vehicles in 2002 with the intention to make his invention accessible and to prevent limited exploitation of its benefits.

Deriving from the concepts of "Air-Port-City", Saraceno recently developed "Flying Garden": floating spheres inhabited by a vast number of Tillandsia airplants. Native to South America and Africa, these plants literally live of air. They possess the ability to take all nutrition and water through their leaf tissues and therefore can exist without any roots for ever. Tillandsias can grow in places no other plants can survive. For Saraceno, the air-side migration of plants, humans and animals generates, beyond geo-political boundaries, mutual exchange and the integration of progress and preservation.

Outside the Volkspark building, Saraceno will establish a temporary work space for the launch of his "Flying Garden" spheres.

Tomas Saraceno was born in Tucumán, Argentina, and came to Europe in 2001. His practice combines art, science and architecture for developing public interventions and visionary concepts to inhabiting the air space.