Massive Vertical Garden in Portland, Oregon
Feb 11th
Vertical Garden Portland
Wyatt Federal Building is planning to build a row of 250 ft. trellises along the west side of its building. SERA Architects is in charge of the remodel of the entire building and has a $135 million budget from the Federal stimulus fund. It’s a unique vertical garden that’s build on a series of 7 panels called ‘vegetated fins’ that will help shade a cool the west side of the building.
The vertical garden will be eye catching, but functional as well. In the winter when the leaves fall off the vertical garden to reveal bare stems, natural light will be let in the building. The entire budget also includes allowances for solar arrays, electricity-generating elevators and a smart lighting system.
SERA Architects is still trying to figure out what plants will grow at over than 200 feet in the air. To prune the walls, workers will be lowered from the the top of the vertical garden like window washers.
My personal take is that it’s a bit much. That’s going to cost a lot of money out of a stimulus fund where a living wall on a bit of a smaller scale would do well. Building something that high in the air as individual wedges would cost a fortune. I’d say if it was done lower to the ground, it would save an exponential amount of money. Then if some of the savings were used to put up an indoor biowall to actively filter the air as well, it might be a better use of cash to go green.
Via Washington Post
Natural air cleaning
Feb 9th
St. Gabriel's Parish living wall 3m x 8m
Nedlaw Living Walls make living walls with a purpose – to clean out indoor air pollutants and allergens. It’s a different focus than standard living walls/vertical gardens. Given the correct installation of the living walls, they can actually replace traditional air filters in your home.
The leaves of the plants change the carbon dioxide into oxygen, but it’s the roots of the plants that take out most of the chemicals according to multiple studies. The living walls from Naturaire facilitate the process of the air cleaning by using a fan and drawing air from the home through the roots of the plants and back out into the room. That process helps clean out the home of the over 300 voc’s (volatile organic compounds) that can potentially be found there.
The living wall system can degrade and breakdown the VOC’s quickly and naturally, even in large volumes of air and acts as a completely natural biofilter. Since they no only can capture, but also breakdown the VOC’s, they end up being able to remove many harmful pollutants that other air filters can’t. According to their website, the air quality of a space relying almost entirely on an active living wall is at least as good as a similar indoor space using a high-tech ventilation system that replaces the building air up to six times per hour.
You can make the living wall system an active biofilter in one of two ways: hooking it up to the HVAC or using a fan in the back of the living wall. The HVAC is the most effective way because it can filter the air of the whole house. The air is drawn through the living wall and cleaned, then into the HVAC system and then disseminated through the house. The second method works as well, but is more localized as it just draws and circulates the air from a particular room.
Remington Group Living Wall freestanding 2 sided wall 35 meters square
How well does the system work?
During studies at the University of Guelph, common indoor air pollutants were released into the air to determine the living wall’s effect on the VOC’s. A single pass through the Living Wall removed up to 80% of the formaldehyde, 50% of the toluene and 10% of TCE (trichloroethylene). The filter is only 5 cm thick, but the ability to have such a strong effect on the chemicals is amazing.
“Concentrations of toluene and formaldehyde in the aquatic system did not increase during the four-week experiment, suggesting that these materials were readily metabolized. TCE levels in the aquatic system initially did increase slightly, but then plateaued, suggesting a possible capability to degrade this compound. Even before the challenge, we knew that two to three percent of the bacteria present had the ability to break down VOCs.” -From their website
“Through photosynthesis, green plants are able to convert CO2 — which is considered an indoor pollutant — into oxygen. The true impact of this on indoor air quality is minor. To be a true CO2 scrubber would require over 10m2 of wall per occupant instead of the typical 0.2m2required to provide clean air.”
How big do you want the living wall?
The suggested dimensions are 1 square meter or yard of active living wall or biofilter (a living wall with an air circulation system attached) for every 100 square feet of floor space.
Remington Vertical Garden
WESST Corporation (Women’s Economic Self-Sufficiency Team) 420 sq ft
Living walls home owner
Sassafraz Restaurant, Toronto living wall 22 sq meters
Vertical Garden on Sunset Blvd
Feb 7th
Natural Mind is moving into the neighborhood and is installing a living wall on Sunset Blvd in Silver Lake. The process has been going on for many months to install the new salon, but it looks like the salon is going to be rewarded with a stunning store front.
Vertical garden starting sunset blvd
Green wall close up
Vertical garden pockets
You can see the pockets of dirt that are holding the plants in the wall. This is a great way to save money if you have the patience. You can see the wall isn’t yet lush and full with plants. The plants were likely started with either seeds or small plugs and the little pockets of dirt stuck in the felt allow them to grow up just like that. You can read more about this vertical garden here.
Greenwall Sunset Blvd
Living Walls up Close
Living Walls Beginning
Different types of Vertical Gardens Analyzed
Feb 5th
Tokyo Green Space came out with an interesting chart comparing different types of vertical gardens to one another. It’s easy to see a bunch of different vertical gardens and get overwhelmed, but his chart does a good job of breaking the options and features down into three categories: Corporate, Small Business and Residential with different size systems for each.
Vertical Gardens
