Green Walls

Green Walls
By: Chris Harpstrite

In my Sustainable Landscape Practices class, taught by Karen Midden in the School of Agriculture, we recently were studying green walls, or living walls. After the lecture we had to do research on a case study of a living wall and write about it. I really enjoyed this assignment so I decided to post my find for all of you to enjoy.

Green Wall Case Study

Designer: Janice Nath of Ambius
Construction: Ambius
Owner: Andaz San Diego

Location: San Diego, California

Source: Landscape Management
Result: http://landscapemanagement.net/2012/10/10/case-study-green-wall-revitalized-at-andaz-san-diego/

Description: An A-list hotel in San Diego’s historic Gaslamp Quarter is a chic hotel and hot-spot for both visitors and locals. They contacted Ambius because a green wall they had was dying and it was making the hotel look bad. Ambius came in a redid the green wall to make it into a lush

Performance Benefits:
- Environmental: Like all green walls, it can help control air contaminants and filter them out. - Aesthetic: How the design was thought of was never mentioned in the case study. However, the hotel has mentioned that this asset has been a positive factor in securing events for the hotel, and is a great backdrop for photos for weddings, private parties and the club scene.

- Functional: The hotel does not use this green wall for anything except aesthetic purposes, besides the better air quality, there are no other functional uses.
- Social: This wall has been a gathering place for photos and conversations for the hotel. It has got great publicity and has brought visitors in specifically to see the hotel.
- Educational: The hotel does not have any signage up explaining the benefits of having a green wall or how it was created, so it does not look as if any educational aspects have been met.
- Economical: Although the green wall itself is not directly making the hotel money, indirectly it has brought in a lot of customers and created a nice place for entertainment, which has brought in revenue.
- Psychological: I believe this wall has a nice calming effect, it makes you feel like you are outdoors surrounded by fresh air, they wall is beautiful and puts people in a beautiful place.

Additional Details:
Most of the original plant material was dying on the original green wall, there was no supportive structure left or ever installed on the wall so plants and soil were just falling out. The original irrigation system installed was not working so the company was manually watering the plants, however, it wasn’t enough and they continued to die. Ambius replanted the wall after installing their own structure planted the entire wall with 2x2 mesh and proceeded to plant their plants. More than 200 plants were used in the green wall.

Project Evaluation:
Overall I believe this project was a success. Going from a dead wall to a live wall was a substantial improvement. It seems that Ambius is a pretty legitimate company and the wall they installed will work well. In addition the wall is bringing in additional revenue and that is always a plus.

As I said I really enjoyed this assignment and learned a lot about how green walls are installed and cared for. I actually didn’t realize the design potential that green walls hold, choosing different types of plants with different colors and textures to create a design was really fascinating to me.