Green roofs, and living walls: a future with more plants for cities!

There are few trends in green building as exciting as green roofs and living walls, which, by the way, are doing much more than merely providing some eye candy.

Here is why green roofs and living wall are awesome and why they’re such a big deal:

1. Cutting Energy Costs

Green roofs also provide an additional layer of thermal insulation, which make buildings cooler during hot summer, warmer during cold winter. Fewer trips to the air conditioning and heater = less energy consumption and therefore less money spent. 

2. Helping with Stormwater

Have you ever wonder why the streets of a city full up with water after a heavy down pour? Many of those roofs retain a good part of that rainwater, and this means that they ease the burden on city drainage and help avoid floods. It also help to purify some of the pollutants before it reaches the ground.

3. Cooling Down Cities

It makes things hotter than they should be because in cities all that one sees is concrete and asphalt. Green roofs are in direct contrast to roofs that reflect sunlight and instead warm things up by evaporating moisture.

4. Improving Biodiversity

Birds and insects can be encouraged to visit green roofs, so they can be made to blend with the local environment. Where the natural environment is scarce, such areas can turn into small oases for animals in cities.

5. Cleaning the Air

Plants have the ability to pull in pollutants and dust and also to take in carbon dioxide while emitting oxygen. This makes it possible for green roofs to increase fresh air quality in populated cities more than what is emitted via deteriorating natural top cover.

Why Living Walls Are Making a Big Difference?

It is about putting plants or planting them right on the surface of a building or structure, commonly called the living walls or vertical gardens. Like green roofs, they have a bunch of benefits:

1. Assisting in Thermoregulation

Living walls have the similar effect to that of the natural insulators. They regulate the amount of heat that enters or leaves a building, which makes them useful in summer and at the same time, useful during winter since it eliminates the need for artificial heating.

2. Blocking Out Noise

These plant-covered walls also work as the noise barrier because the plants absorb the sound and are beneficial if your building is located in the noisy area like New York for example.

3. Mental Health Perks

Research has it that areas with plantations and greeneries have known to have effect of reducing stress levels and enhancing mood. In other words, living walls are not only ecological, they are beneficial for our health as well.

4. Cleaner Indoor Air

When placed indoors, living walls will help filter air inside a building that is used in the construction of the living wall. They eliminate “bad” elements and bring in fresh oxygen making the inside environment of buildings healthier.

5.  Smart Use of Space

As it is difficult to find space in cities, living walls are an effective method of making a building more green without occupying the ground. It’s all the environmental advantages of greenspace without any of the cost in terms of square footage.

The Downside (Because There’s Always One)

While green roofs and living walls sound amazing, they do come with some challenges:

1. Cost

These systems cannot be installed for free. It requires special material, which has to be watered in certain ways besides the actual plants may need the structural reinforcement. However, in the end, the costs of energy will be lower and the value of the property may even be raised.

2. Maintenance

Plants need love and care. Green roofs and living walls are plants that need to be tended as any other plants with regard to watering, pruning, and application of fertilizers. If you don’t maintain the plants, they might not grow as expected and that would become very expensive.

3. Extra Weight

The live loads coming from green roofs are usually large since they include extra mass of the vegetation type. They have to be assessed by an expert/engineer and evaluated before you can think of putting one in the building in question.

THE BIG PICTURE

Use of green roofs and living walls goes beyond being creative ways of putting green on structures; they are solving some of the big environmental problems that cities have. From reducing energy use and improving the quality of the air we breathe to mitigating urban heat and promoting biodiverse settlements, these systems are appearing as key in enhancing people’s occupancy of cities. Incorporating plants into architecture is a win for everyone: it is, therefore, like making a gift to our planet, beneficial to people, and beneficial to the structure and construct of the building we’re trying to create. And this is what really should be happening in the background of growing cities – more and more green roofs and living walls becoming part of the answer to what is shaping our cities for the better.

Here are five examples of buildings with impressive green roofs and living walls:

 1. The Bosco Verticale being located in Milan, Italy and is the world’s largest vertical garden.

   These two residential buildings resemble over 20,000 plants, so they are called a vertical garden. It helps to renew the air, cut back on the number of energy resources the city uses and add to the numbers of wildlife creatures living in Florida’s cities.

2. Vancouver Convention Centre (Vancouver, Canada)

Seventy percent of the roof space is made up of a green roof which is a six-acre structure that includes plants and bird habitats. Besides, it plays a role of an insulator, regulates the power consumption and controls storm water drainage.

3. Architectural design of One Central Park Australia (Sydney)

Perhaps the most well known for its vertical gardens which now host over 250 plant species and are known to increase air quality, lessen the heat island effect, and lower energy intensity.

4. ACROS, Hall fuer Fukuoka prefecture (Fukuoka, Japan)

Integrated with a large green roof garden of over 35,000 plants, this building is energy-efficient through insulating effects, cooling function and offering the public a landscaped area for leisure.

5. The Edge (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

An outstanding example of a sustainable office building, The Edge incorporates green roof; light collecting solar panels and many more in the aspects of energy and storm water utilization.

The beauty of Net Zero concept is that it’s adaptable. 

You can design a house, an office, or even a mixed use development because the principles stays the same, of course each project requires it’s own unique approach.

Urban centers also, are particularly “cool” if you think of Net Zero innovation, you see, dense cities have the potential to significantly cut their emissions through sustainable design practices.

The idea of a building that produces as much energy as it consumes doesn’t belong to the movies anymore, It sounds like such a futuristic concept if you think about it  but it’s not, it’s a fast growing reality in architectural design, a very cool in any opinion.

By the way…

According to the World Green Building Council, there are more or less 500 Net Zero commercial buildings around the world, and this, is pretty cool!