Juliana Loli + Jeanine Mathews- Winter 2011

In response to a rapidly urbanizing world, living architecture has become a necessary and practical application to the city and suburban grid. Throughout the world, advocates of Green Wall practices are discovering innovative, cost effective and energy efficient ways to provide aesthetic and functional benefits to our built environment. The “green” practices of our planners, designers, and scientists have resorted to the traditional application of plants to provide a multitude of benefits for our modern world, including the purification of our air and water systems, the return of beneficial insect and animal species, and an overall improvement in human mental, spiritual and physical health. The notion of green infrastructure or “living architecture” is one that dates back to Babylonian and Roman times, where hanging gardens and trailing vines covered the facades of buildings, pergolas and trellis structures. Today, we are witnessing a return to this pragmatic implementation of living systems, utilizing available surface area to provide individuals with the benefits of both ornamental and productive vertical gardens.