Living Walls and Their Benefits
In a time like this, when climate change is significantly affecting our planet, the nature, wildlife and people, it is more important than ever to look into more sustainable and eco-friendly options in everything we do. For a long time, green infrastructure meant parks, gardens and green corridors, but unfortunately these are not sufficient anymore. Researchers have looked into solutions to reduce air pollution, protect biodiversity and other issues caused by the current environmental crisis (Moon, 2017).
Sustainable architecture became increasingly popular, one significant idea being integrating nature within existing buildings. Some of the most used ways of doing this are green roofs, green facades and living walls, with the first one being most widely applied (RadiÄ, BrkoviÄ Dodig & Auer, 2019). Although they started as an aesthetic feature in buildings, because of the current technologies used in these greening systems, they can now represent a great way of helping the environment, especially in urban areas (Manso & Castro-Gomes, 2015).
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Living walls are defined as âdesigned, built, and maintained vegetation elements that potentially have multi-functional and deliberate environmental benefits for their built surroundingsâ (RadiÄ, et al., 2019). These seem like the perfect solution especially at urban scale thanks to the variety of benefits that they produce. Living walls can contribute a lot to urban biodiversity (Collins, Schaafsma & Hudson, 2017), improve air quality (Pugh et al., 2012) and help reduce urban temperatures (Santamouris, 2014). This is especially important in the UK, as the climate change means that in the next decades, the temperature will be abnormally high and because the cities were not designed for it, the heat becomes trapped in a lot of places. Living walls can help with this, as plants lower temperatures through evapotranspiration, so if there are enough such green systems put in place, it can significantly help with the heat (Biotecture, n.d.). Another great benefit of living walls is reducing flooding as they are irrigated by harvested rainwater caught in storage tanks on the roof of buildings (Andrews, 2013).
Closely connected to the biophilic theory, living walls also have a lot of positive effects on people. Biophilia hypothesis is the âidea that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of lifeâ (Rogers, n.d.). This type of design has been proven to improve mental health by decreasing stress, anxiety and negative emotions and increasing productivity, performance and positive emotions (Ryan et al., 2014).
My goal was to focus on a sustainable design and because of the many benefits living walls have, I considered it to be the perfect concept for me to use. The assemblage that I created is made of medium-density fibreboard (MDF) that has been cut, curved, and sanded into 8 individual abstract shapes representing the flow of natural shapes. These have all been glued together, and left with open spaces, which were filled with lawn weeds to represent plants of a living wall. My base for this design also comes from my proposed idea for the Interior major project, which is to transform the Knight and Lee building into a residential complex.I did multiple site visits and analysed the buildingâs exterior, wanting to create an accurate representation of it through my assemblage but unfortunately, I did not have access to the original materials of the building (red terracotta bricks, marble, and concrete), so I had to use wood instead.
In conclusion, given the current environmental crisis that our planet is going through, it is essential for everyone to focus on sustainability, and one very promising architectural design is the living wall.
Andrews, K. (2013, August 21). Londonâs largest living wall will âcombat floodingâ. https://www.dezeen.com/2013/08/21/londons-largest-living-wall-will-combat-flooding/
 Biotecture (n.d.). Benefits of Exterior Living Walls. How Green is Your View? https://www.biotecture.uk.com/benefits/benefits-of-exterior-living-walls/
 Collins, R., Schaafsma, M., & Hudson, M. D. (2017). The value of green walls to urban biodiversity. Land Use Policy, 64, 114-123 https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/406839/1/Collins_et_al_accepted_final_ms.pdf
Manso, M., & Castro-Gomes, J. (2015). Green wall systems: A review of their characteristics. Renewable and sustainable energy reviews, 41, 863-871. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2014.07.203
Moon, Y. B. (2017). Simulation modelling for sustainability: a review of the literature. International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, 10(1), 2-19. : https://doi.org/10.1080/19397038.2016.1220990
Pugh, T. A., MacKenzie, A. R., Whyatt, J. D., & Hewitt, C. N. (2012). Effectiveness of green infrastructure for improvement of air quality in urban street canyons. Environmental science & technology, 46(14), 7692-7699. https://doi.org/10.1021/es300826w
 RadiÄ, M., BrkoviÄ Dodig, M., & Auer, T. (2019). Green facades and living wallsâa review establishing the classification of construction types and mapping the benefits. Sustainability, 11(17), 4579. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11174579
Rogers, K. (n.d). Biophilia hypothesis. https://www.britannica.com/science/biophilia-hypothesis
Ryan, C. O., Browning, W. D., Clancy, J. O., Andrews, S. L., & Kallianpurkar, N. B. (2014). Biophilic design patterns: emerging nature-based parameters for health and well-being in the built environment. ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, 8(2), 62. https://earthwise.education/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Biophilicdesign-patterns.pdfÂ
Santamouris, M. (2014). Cooling the citiesâa review of reflective and green roof mitigation technologies to fight heat island and improve comfort in urban environments. Solar energy, 103, 682-703. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2012.07.003
