My Own Private Livingwall......
Scalability brings natural brilliance down to the homefront
Living walls are awesome! There's no question to that. Sure they're gorgeous, like vertical rainforests, but the truly innovative part of these biofilters are their capacity to break down hundreds of different kinds of contaminants found in indoor air. Thanks to the action of microbes that live on the plant roots, common pollutants such as formaldehyde, toluene, carbon monoxide, and benzene are transformed into water and air. Not only that, but as you can imagine, on a cold grey winters day, These walls become havens.
Traditionally these walls have been built into office towers and malls, but now they have been scaled down (just as efficient) and are available for individuals and families!
The first time i saw a living wall was in Toronto in the Canada Life Building (an insurance company with so many photocopiers that they probably had a HUGE toluene problem before installing the living wall) They actually had an entire room with 3 living walls (the 4th wall was a window) and all the air from the entire building was filtered through this room. Know what happened? People started booking the room for meetings and you couldn't find a seat at lunchtime... see, people love the way they feel when they are in a room like this. Wouldn't you?
One of the selling points for an Insurance company (believe it or not they are not doing it because its green) is the potential to save money. Normally, to maintain indoor air quality they'd bring in fresh air from the outside through ventilation systems. In the winter, outdoor air must be heated to room temperature, and in the summer it needs cooling. That's around 10% of the total energy a building consumes, and a biofilter can substantially reduce the need to bring in fresh air by generating clean air indoors. And unlike standard filters, the living wall does not become saturated, because the microbes break down the contaminants rather than simply soak them up. It's a self-cleaning, self-rejuvenating filter.
That trip to Canada Life was years ago-- and about a month ago I bumped into Alan Darlington. Back then he was the grad student taking care of the walls. Now Professor Darlington has a company called Air Quality Solutions and they build mega huge living walls, of course (he built that huge one in the top pic), but AQS also manufactures these:
Personal living walls!
Not only are they affordable beautiful and just as effective for a 1,200 sqft apartment as the major ones are for office towers, but they also act as a thermal mass. So in the winter they will help heat your place, and of course cool it in the summertime.
So if you live in a condo and the air quality ain't so hot--- or you have serious asthma or some other respiratory ailments, or you simply love clean fresh air and enjoy a great symbiotic relationship with nature even when in your apartment, this may be the living wall for you!
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