Eilo went south!

This year EILO went to Madrid, in sunny Spain. The two-day excursion actually began on the preceding Wednesday evening. The celebration of meeting each other and exploring numerous green projects began at 6.30 pm with a festive welcome drink on the rooftop terrace of the fantastic and beautiful green Inhala Hotel. Almost all 90! participants had already arrived, so the first meetings with old and new friends started already even before the real start.

Thursday 25 september

We started the day by walking from the hotel to the Caixa Forum Hotel wall created by Patrick Blanc. There the bus picked us up and brought us to the Arganzuela Palacio de Cristal which unfortunately was closed due tue an technical emergency. Luckily a great parc was nearby, and lunch at the very green restaurant Balamo made up for all the lost greenery.

Friday 26 september

The morning was very well spent at Ciudad financiera Banco Santander. A huge terrain, just outside of Madrid, full of giant old olive trees, and meticulously maintained greenery inside and out.  The head of the maintenance team showed us around and told us about the huge job of maintaining and watering all inside and outside plants. Especcially in the Spanish climate of today. If one of the water systems is down for one week, all plants within that part will have died. 

After the visit to the bank we traveled to the lunch restaurant. On our way we stopped shortly at the M30 motorway to admire the up until recently largest green wall of the world, created by Iván Gaviño from Terapia Urbana.

The symposium

Ater a short break it was time for the symposium. There were speakers from India, Spain, and France  talking about indoor biodiversity, water management, green wall systems and urban greenery. You find most of the presentations below.

Keynote speaker Prasannamurti Desai talked to us via a giant video sreeen from India and told us about the concept (video 1) and realisation (video 2) of the incredible green Bangalore Airport.