Patrick Blanc is a French botanist, typically wrongly credited as the inventor of the vertical garden (aka. Green Wall, Botanical Brick), a title which belongs to Professor Stanley Hart White at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1938). Still, Patrick Blanc is certainly modern innovator of the green wall – a wall, either free-standing or part of a building, that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and, in some cases, soil or an inorganic growing medium.

Now, he has teamed up with French architect and Pritzker laureate Jean Nouvel to create a a “living, breathing Eden” in One Central Park, Sydney’s newest residential tower: a symbolic and symbiotic combination of practicality, environmentalism and esthetics.

Leafy vines and foliage will crawl up the 166-meter facade and create the world’s tallest living green wall – no later than January 2014, only a few months from now.

The living wall will consist of 190 native Australian and 160 exotic plant species and it will cover 50% of the building facade, in an attempt of replicating a natural cliff side.

One Central Park will consist of two residential towers that house 624 apartments.

Via Inhabitat.