Building Construction and Installations of Green Walls and Green Roofs

Abstract

Many cities around the world distinguish the significance of having green infrastructure; that is, natural landscape assets, including green spaces and water systems. Green infrastructure includes trees, parks, water sensitive urban design (such as wetlands and rain gardens) and green roofs, walls and facades. Green roofs, walls and porticos look attractive as a way of adding green infrastructure to a city because they can be comprised on new buildings or retrofitted onto existing buildings. Walls, Roofs and facades can be installed on existing buildings, or built into new structures. A Green roof is a vegetated landscape that is fitted on a roof surface, and is built up from a series of either loose-laid layers, or modules made of pre-prepared layers in trays. Green facades are created by growing plants up and across the face of a building. Plants are either rooted in the ground or grown from containers mounted at different levels on the face of the building. Green walls are plants grown in vertical systems that are usually attached to internal or external walls. Green walls vary from green facades in that plantings are made across the whole vertical structure, as diverge to planting at the base of the structure to enable vertical and horizontal growth. In a green wall, plants, growing medium, irrigation and drainage are incorporated into the system. The paper discusses the various methodologies and techniques used in construction and installation of Green walls and Green Roofs.