Environmental benefits of indoor living wall

Abstract

Indoor living wall is a newly developed greening technology that make use of facade to green the interior side of building. Owing to the limited land space in Hong Kong, indoor living wall becomes a new greening alternative in the urban area. Currently, there are three common types of systems: Felt, modular and trellis. Although outdoor living wall is more popular, indoor type is gaining more popularity as it can bring certain environmental benefits to building occupants. However, the construction and operations of indoor living wall will also cause damage to the environment. Under this circumstances, it is important to evaluate the environmental benefits and drawbacks of different indoor living wall systems and thus to find out the most beneficial one.

The methodologies used in this study includes literature review, life cycle assessment (LCA), questionnaire and a technical visit. Through studying the literature, the current development and the knowledge gap is identified. This method is also used for summarizing the air purification ability of indoor plants and the living wall.

After gaining the fundamental knowledge of the topics, LCA will be conducted to assess the environmental damage of resources, human health and ecosystem. The modular and felt systems under different disposal scenarios will be compared. The LCA results show that modular system has more benefits than the felt system. Also, using recycled material and disposal method is more environmentally friendly than landfills.

Afterwards, technical visits to Exchange Tower and IFC 1 is carried out to find out the difficulties encountered during the operation of the living wall. Finally, an online survey is launched which aims at collecting public attitude towards implementation of the indoor living wall as well as how the system affects their psycho. The public shows a supportive attitude for the implementation of system, and they do think the system can help them to reduce stress and pressure.

Recommendations are made for the design considerations and the way to enhance benefits. The suggestions on planning and environmental performance of indoor living wall are summarized in the form of checklists.