That is the musee de quai branly. It's a vertical garden on one of the sides of the main building. If you look really close there is a lot of infrastructure to water and feed those plants. Also, at this altitude and orientation the plants are shielded from weather extremes fairly well. The architect was complaining that these high-rises don't have any of this plant nutrient infrastructure nor the shielding. If you've been to the top of the Eiffel tower you'll know the wind can get pretty intense up there. Now imagine trying to exist as a tree up there.
The problem is that architects are trying to make their buildings look more ecofriendly, green by putting more trees on it.
Yes, but couldn't we put all that infrastructure in skyscrapers?
Also trees are quite sturdy, in the desert they grow as high up as 1500m according to wikipedia. Here in Europe we have lone trees in the alps as high up as ~1800m if I remember my primary school geography correctly. Have you ever been so high? It gets pretty crazy as far as weather is concerned and situation can change from lovely sun to heavy storm with insane cold in a matter of minutes.
you could but most of these architect renderings don't look like they have any of that. Some of them are communal terraces with deep infrastructure for trees to grow down into. But a few of these renderings are smaller terraces and judging from the rendering just 30-50cm of structure above the apartment below. Except grass not much can grow there. I've seen some pullt it off fairly well. Like the Sands Marina Bay Hotel in Singapore. In real life it looks like it does in the renderings before groundbreaking.
The problem is that architects are trying to make their buildings look more ecofriendly, green by putting more trees on it.