Green building to include 400,000 plants on ‘living wall’

The design for a new office building in London lays out plans for what will be the largest living wall in Europe

Spotted: Architecture firm Shephard Robson have unveiled plans to cover a new building with “the largest living wall in Europe.”  The new building, Citicape House, will be constructed on the site of the newly-established Culture Mile in the City of London and will include office and event space, a hotel, restaurant and a publicly-accessible roof terrace.

The building will be wrapped in a façade made up of more than 400,000 plants. The façade will also incorporate a rainwater collection system that will irrigate the wall and reduce the need to pipe excess water to the site. At roof level, there will be spaces designed to help threatened native wildflower species to flourish.

The green wall is estimated to provide six tonnes of oxygen and will capture more than eight tonnes of CO2 from the air each year. This will be especially welcome, as the building is located in a heavily trafficked area. It will also help to mitigate the urban heat island effect, lowering the temperatures around the building by three to five degrees Celsius. The wall will also improve air quality by trapping approximately 500kg of particulate matter per year.

The idea behind the design was to inject a fresh perspective on London’s environmental issues. “Rather than having an isolated patch of greenery, we felt that an immersive and integrated approach would have the biggest impact on the local environmental conditions, making a better and more liveable city, as well as articulating a clear architectural statement,” Dan Burr, partner at Sheppard Robson, told Dezeen.com.

At Springwise, we have seen a growing interest in creating environmentally sustainable buildings, for all types of uses. Some of the most innovative have included a smart forest city and a green high rise.