Add as a preferred source on Google

Green Wall Stands Out

  • 03/01/17
green wall

The green wall on the front of the Culinary and Allied Health building demonstrates KVCC’s commitment to sustainability in a seamless and aesthetically pleasing way.

Green walls transform ordinary wall surfaces into vertical gardens. That transformation from commonplace wall into vertical landscape adds a living element to a building. Green walls are visually appealing, inviting and inspiring, and beneficial to the environment. For example, green wall plants release water vapor that cools the air, helping naturally cool the buildings on which they are installed.

Many green wall installations are still retrofits on existing buildings. However, it has become increasingly common for new construction to be designed from the start with a green wall as an integral architectural feature of a building.

This was the case with the green wall on the front, east-facing façade of the Culinary and Allied Health Building on the Bronson Healthy Living Campus of Kalamazoo Community College (KVCC) in Michigan. “The green wall is not an appendage to the building but an essential element,” says Mike Collins, executive vice president, enrollment and campus operations, KVCC.

The building was designed with a green wall that stands out as a signature statement of commitment to sustainability while fitting seamlessly into the building and its surrounding landscape. Set within a two-foot-deep niche designed into the façade as a recessed frame, the green wall is surrounded by windows on three sides. The windows outline the green wall with light. Their green and blue glass colors symbolize earth and sky to express the building’s design theme.

The 324-square-foot green wall extends the three-story height of the building. Constructed with the LiveWall system from LiveWall, LLC (Spring Lake, MI), the KVCC installation features 30 8-inch and 255 16-inch LiveWall planter modules. The modular LiveWall system was selected because it is engineered with consideration to both the structural and horticultural elements of a green wall.

www.livewall.com

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

Featured

  • ed tech conference calendar

    Upcoming Awards, Events & Webinars

  • sapling sprouting from a cracked stone

    Lessons in Resilience: Disaster Recovery in Our Schools

    Facility managers play a pivotal role in how well a school weathers and recovers from a crisis. Whether it's a hurricane, a flood, a tornado, or a man-made event, preparation determines resilience.

  • How One School Reimagined Learning Spaces—and What Others Can Learn

    When Collegedale Academy, a PreK–8 school outside Chattanooga, Tenn., needed a new elementary building, we faced the choice that many school leaders eventually confront: repair an aging facility or reimagine what learning spaces could be. Our historic elementary school held decades of memories for families, including some who had once walked its halls as children themselves. But years of wear and the need for costly repairs made it clear that investing in the old building would only patch the problems rather than solve them.

  • University of West Florida Opens New Laboratory Facility

    The University of West Florida recently announced that renovation work is complete on a new lab building for its campus in Pensacola, Fla., according to university news. Building 80 will serve as the home to the university’s civil engineering program and the Tyler Chase Norwood Construction Management Program.

Digital Edition