The researchers of Cooling Singapore are always looking for design solutions that reduce our need for cool air in the first place. While the benefits of trees have been obvious for centuries, yet, the process of planting them efficiently has been met with many setbacks, it mostly boils down to one question: “Where can we put trees so that it would maximize the shading effect while leaving room for other infrastructures?”. Most cities often just put vegetation on the ground floor in the form of parks; this is considered an inefficient way of reducing the Urban Heat Island effect as the cooling potential of trees is confined to one space. Singapore’s solution is to build the trees along the facades of buildings. They’ve run countless simulations on BIM softwares and discovered that this, along with strategically-placed parks, is the most efficient way of mitigating the warming effect. This is why you often see buildings in Singapore that have trees growing on their walls. With the tree’s natural evaporating process, it can cool both the tenants inside the building and people around them. Not to mention, as the emission of CO2 from cars on the street rises, the vegetation can capture this and release oxygen, hampering the global warming effect.