The green building envelope: Vertical greening

Planting on roofs and façades is one of the most innovative and fastest developing fields of green technologies with respect to the built environment and horticulture. This thesis is focused on vertical greening of structures and to the multi-scale benefits of vegetation. Vertical green can improve the environment in urban areas and is becoming a key design consideration in modern building developments. Vertical greening of structures offers large surfaces with vegetation and at the same time contribute to the improvement of the thermal behaviour of buildings, increased biodiversity, aesthetical and social aspects but also reduction of air polluting substances as fine dust, carbon dioxide, etc. There are different concepts of vertical green to vegetate the exterior building envelope; two major categories can be considered namely: green façades and living walls. Green façades are made up of climbing plants either growing directly on a wall or, more recently, growing indirectly against a wall with specially designed supporting structures, such as grids, trellis or meshes. Living wall systems (LWS) are composed of pre-vegetated panels or integrated fabric systems that are affixed to a structural wall or frame, whereas a hydroponical system is required to maintain plant growth. Living wall systems (LWS) is a relative new technology and rarely investigated yet. One of the multi-scale benefits of vegetation is the accumulation of fine dust particles on leaf surfaces. Dust particles smaller than 10 ?m are mainly relevant in dense urban areas, because they can be deeply inhaled into the respiratory system and cause damages for the human health. Results found during the doctoral study confirm the relation between particle origin, compound and particle number between different environments as the woodland and near a traffic road. Using image analyzing software on electron microscope images as shown in the thesis enables to study and examine dust particles directly on leaves
Materials & Environment chair Sustainability
Civil Engineering and Geosciences