Sustainable urban development by means of green walls

Abstract

The use of green walls (also commonly referred to as living walls or vertical gardens) is not a new concept in building envelopes. Integrating vegetation in architectural structures may be a sustainable approach to the construction of façades of the new and existing structures. Green walls belong to the highly innovative and the fastest developing concepts of green building technology. This fact is supported by the examples of structures originally built with green walls which greatly add to the total visual appeal of buildings and are an important factor in the improvement of their thermal characteris- tics. Green walls have their own aesthetic values which are in direct correlation with human interaction aimed at creating visual diversity within urban spaces. Artistic perception of green walls of the recent era has radically changed, along with the new technological possibilities, their further development and application in the designing effort to formulate shape and materialization as a spatial structure with the already known aspects of traditional modelling. Green walls appear in space as elements car- rying artistic application and sculptural creation in spatial architectural form of structures. Greening and preserving urban spaces have become important issues in considering conditions for designing architectural structures and redefining the relation between technology, energy and shaping, with the possibility of applying green walls in the architectural transformation process of the urban space. Green walls have raised new aesthetic issues, which are in direct correlation with technical solutions.