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Growing walls

SHORTAGE of space is a familiar lament of city folk fond of gardening. But now, architect Gosta Nilsson has found a novel way to make walls using hollow concrete blocks that could be filled with sand and manure for plants to grow in. These "growing" walls would be ideal around compounds or along the edges of balconies in cities.

The concrete blocks are made using a simple, hand-operated block-making machine. When building the wall, some of the blocks are turned sideways. The exposed hollow part has a floor and a hole for drainage (See diagram).

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