Living Architecture Monitor - Green Roofs for Healthy Cities

GRHCUPDATE
AVERTICALOASIS—MFOPARKINZURICHSWITZERLAND
GREENWALL
TECHNOLOGYCLIMBING
Green Roofs Healthy Cities is branching
out beyond green roofs and into green
walls that involve the use of a variety of
exciting new technologies that integrate
plants with the facades of buildings for
multiple benefits and integration potential.
In early fall of 2006 Steven Peck, president of
GRHC brought together various green
wall system manufacturers and together they
struck a Green Wall Sub-Committee. Their
first order of business was to combine
resources and expertise to develop a new
training course for green walls with expert
assistance from Randy Sharp, principal of
Sharp and Diamond, and a long time advocate
and designer of green walls. This effort led to
the development of Green Walls 101: Introduction
to Systems and Design, launched at the
Greening Rooftops for Sustainable Communities
conference in Minneapolis last May.
The new Green Wall course, the first in North
America, provides an overview of the many
tools and techniques needed to satisfy greenwall
project objectives, the major functions and
characteristics of components and systems
available in the marketplace, as well as benefits
and policy programs driving this industry forward.
Since its launch the course has been delivered
in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, New
York, Washington, Vancouver and Toronto to
over 300 professionals.
The upcoming 6th Annual Greening
Rooftops for Sustainable Communities Conference
in Baltimore will mark another first
for the Green Walls Sub-Committee, with
the introduction of a green walls category in
the Green Roof Awards of Excellence program.
The new award will recognize green
wall projects that exhibit extraordinary leadership
in integrated design and implementation
of green walls. It will also help increase
general awareness of green wall infrastructure
and its associated public and private
benefits, while recognizing the valuable contributions
of green wall design professionals.
The Green Wall Sub-Committee, chaired
by Reuben Freed, greenscreen®, is also
beginning to develop a green wall research
program. It will establish a research fund and
is exploring strategies to stimulate research
that will fall in line with the USGBC and
CanGBC LEED® rating systems.
The six LEED® categories (taken from the
LEED® 2.1 for Non-Commercial buildings
checklist) which will guide the scope of the
project include are: Sustainable Sites; Water
Efficiency; Energy & Atmosphere; Materials
and Resources; Indoor Environmental Quality;
and, Innovation & Design Process. It is the
sub-committee’s hope that this information
will facilitate the explicit inclusion of green
walls in the LEED® rating system and increase
the rates of green wall construction throughout
North America.
The sub-committee is also is working to
establish a green wall image, project information
and incentive database, which will
Photo courtesy of Jakob
LIVING ARCHITECTURE MONITOR
WINTER