Living walls,
also referred to as vertical gardens, green walls, or green facades, are
becoming an increasingly popular solution for providing not only a pleasing
accent piece, but also a way of implementing green solutions for shading an exterior
wall, cleansing the surrounding air, and providing native vegetation that might
also serve as an urban garden.
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| Photo via www.greenwall.com.au |
Living walls
are composed of plants that grow on the surfaces of either the interior or
exterior vertical spaces of a building. Living walls do not require soil imitating
the conditions in which these plants grow in nature. This allows them to be placed
on a building’s vertical surface. As long as sufficient water is provided, the
vegetation used in a vertical garden can survive without the use of soil. Plants
on a living wall live without soil, using many natural adaptive strategies to
survive conditions related to reduced nutrition and exposed conditions. They survive
on the resources that provide adequate growing conditions such as light, air
movement, water and nutrients.
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| Photo via www.greenwall.com.au |
Living walls are also beneficial in helping a project
achieve LEED certification. Since native planting is most commonly used in
living walls, this helps to reduce the water usage that is used for landscaping
and could be applied to Water Efficiency Credit 3. Living walls also contribute
to other credits such as Sustainable Sites Credit 7.1 (Heat Island Reduction)
and Sustainable Sites Credit 8 (Light Pollution Reduction). An indoor
environmental credit can be achieved if it is proved that the living wall
is contributing to improve the indoor quality of the space.
See the list below for companies that offer innovative solutions for designing a living wall. Research in this area will reveal if this solution is appropriate for a particular project.
We'd love to hear about great living walls you've seen or used in projects in the comments section below!
Written by Gaby Soriano, Associate AIA, LEED AP BD+C
Love this! This is a cool resource as well: http://www.insideurbangreen.org/2011/05/floraframe-living-wall-by-plantsonwalls.html
ReplyDeleteAlso check out the green wall at this new, local West Elm store! http://travelcostamesa.com/blog/2012/west-elm-opens-its-first-orange-county-location-at-south-coast-plaza-in-costa-mesa/
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