[Greenbuilding] living wall

[RT]

On Sun, 06 Feb 2011 10:48:58 -0500, Gennaro Brooks-Church  
<info at ecobrooklyn.com> wrote:

> I think his system is completely flawed and
> unsustainable.
> At the core of his problem is that he uses almost exclusively
> non-native plants. He also uses hydroponics instead of soil.
> This requires an entirely artificial biosphere that needs constant
> energy or else it will die immediately. You need to constantly feed
> the plants with nutrient rich water to recreate the fake environment -

> The best design I've seen is around the milk crate style,
> similar to the Tournesol VGM.
> crates range from one foot deep to three inches

And I think that these so-called "living walls" created using  
plast-eccchhh! containers which provide only 3 to 12 inches of soil and  
require supporting frameworks made out of high embodied-energy materials,  
not much different than hydroponic systems (ie "artificial biospheres"  
that would die without constant resource-intensive attention). The only  
difference is that one uses a bit of dirt.

With Climate Change, we are seeing more/frequent extremes of weather --  
more frequent/longer periods of drought, extreme heat and rapid drastic  
changes in winter -- harsh, sub-zero-freeze-the-nuts-off-an-iron-bridge  
weather one day and a couple or few days later, balmy almost T-shirt  
weather

To survive those weather extremes, plants need deep root systems and the  
thermal buffering/moisture retention capacity that the mass of the Earth  
provides.  3 to 12 inches of soil in a plast-ecchhh! bag isn't going to do  
the trick.


These nouveau-Green "living walls" should be called what they are: window  
planter boxes.

The means and structure to support window planter boxes on the sides of  
buildings have a long tradition throughout most of the world outside of  
North America and for the most part, have done it in a more elegant manner  
than the Green-washed "systems" being marketed these days (and that's what  
it is, "marketing").

Why are the "traditional" window box planters and their support structures  
more elegant ?

Perhaps because they aren't just xeroxed afterthoughts pulled out of a  
catalogue and applied as pastiche to buildings but rather,are designed as  
integral elements of the fascade.  ie masonry brackets corbelled or  
cantilevered out from the masonry to provide support arms for stone  
shelves or boxes.

And why are these Greenwashed "living wall systems" using new plast-echhh!  
containers and new, high embodied-energy "support structure" materials  
when all urban centres already have large repositories of salvaged,  
discarded porcelain and/or terra cotta and/or cast iron receptacles &  
plumbing pipes/fittings, miscellaneous structural materials awaiting  
re-use ?

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a >
manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "reply"
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