Vertical Lift: Green Walls around the World

(Worth Avenue - Palm Beach, FL, courtesy GSky)As any city dweller can tell you: space is at a premium.  Green space – where plants can live – is even harder to find.  Developers prefer to utilize most if not all of their land for residential or commercial use. Of course there are the mandated city parks – but they are few and they could be located too far from you to enjoy on a regular basis.  Why not integrate green space right into the fabric of our lives – literally into the walls where we live or work?

This is exactly what Patrick Blanc, French botanist, has been accomplishing all over Paris with his vertical green walls.  Below is an example of his work at the Parisian store, BHV Homme.  The choice of plants and its artistic arrangement become part of the exterior design of the retail store. 

(BHV Homme Paris)Another beautifully designed green wall is on the Saks Fifth Avenue store located in the shopping area of Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida – see first photo above. GSky planted an abstract design using grass, jasmine, palmetto, philodendron, and axillaris, to name a few.  Below is the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia, another GSky project, with a wall of various plants running across the first level of the building. During winter time, the plant wall system contains temperature sensors that shut down the water supply when the weather hits the freezing mark. 

(Rittenhouse Hotel, Philadelphia, PA, courtesy GSky)Besides providing a beautiful focal point, green walls have many practical benefits for both the owner and the inhabitants of the building.  Green walls save energy and keeps air conditioning costs down.  Reduced air conditioning usage will in turn reduce the emission of greenhouse gas – a plus for the environment. 

The plants also improve air quality by producing clean oxygen.  They also attract urban wildlife such as birds and butterflies and restore natural habitats that were destroyed by the construction of the buildings.  The green walls reduce city noise by providing sound insulation too. Finally, greenery can extend the life of the building and prevent cracks by protecting its façade from acid rain.

(Athenaeum Hotel, London)Green walls can also be edible. You can plant salad leaves, herbs, vegetables and fruit.  Green Living Technologies founder George Irwin worked with Urban Farming - an organization whose mission is to eliminate hunger - to create living green walls in Los Angeles that would feed the homeless. Volunteers were chosen to help install and maintain the living walls.  They have produced a diverse crop from tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach to strawberries and baby watermelons. 

Peter Blanc said it best:  “The plant wall has a real future for the well-being of people living in cities. The horizontal is finished — it’s for us. But the vertical is still free.”

Interested in learning more about green design?  Take a look at Sheffield School's Complete Course in Interior Design.  At Sheffield, you will learn how to transform a space, create color schemes, and select furniture, lighting, and accessories. 

Why People Should Hire an Interior Designer

Irwin Weiner ASID - The first design project I ever did - now over 20 years ago - was helping decorate the home of friends of my parents in South Africa. Financial difficulties forced them to scale down. Using their good-quality furniture and art, I created an interior that was a lot better than what they had expected. It was so successful, in fact, that they were able to feel that their move was not as much a "social decline" as they'd anticipated.

I did for them what I still maintain a good interior design project should do for any client: create a stage set to live in that is so beautiful, that it enhances your life. It's a little grandiose, I know, but it's a worthy goal nonetheless.

My first design project was a great opportunity for me, too. Even though I wasn't being paid, I realized that it was a good chance to gain my first referral. When I asked the wife what she thought of the interior I'd completed, she said that she particularly loved that it didn't look like it had been "decorated," and she was happy to know that her friends would feel the same way.

When I pressed her on that remark, she confided that hiring a designer made her feel inadequate, both in terms of her taste level, as well as it being somewhat of an unnecessary luxury. One could say that it was like the extravagance of hiring a trainer at the gym when all one needs is self-discipline and a bit of research. And most people think that they've got good taste, so why hire an outsider to design your home?

I'm often confronted with similar thoughts from people who express a disdain for the interior design industry. There are many people who don't have good taste, they can afford to hire a designer, but they elaborately  justify not using a professional. One of my favorite Why I Won't Hire An Interior Designer rationales is "Interiors are like Art, and I don't need to know much about it; I only need to know what I like." 

Now that I'm older and more exerienced in my profession (of which I am very proud), when I meet people who profess the reluctance to hire a professional, or demean interior designers as a whole, I now have a few stock responses.

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