The plants in a new medical school building in Lebanon are not there simply for aesthetics; they are part of a unique filtration system that detoxifies the air coming out of the HVAC system.

In the first building of its new satellite campus in Lebanon, installed a 300-square-foot living wall. The system created by draws air from the HVAC system through the plants in order to clean the air.

“A lot of people doing these just make a wall of plants, but this system is really part of an integrated approach to use natural materials to truly purify the air in the building,” said Marcus Schiff of , the Portland-based firm that designed the facility.

In the “true living wall,” as Schiff called it, a water reservoir at the bottom of the wall lifts water to the top of the growth media, and then water flows down at the same time that air is drawn through the plants. When contaminated air goes through the roots, chemicals and toxins such as benzene and formaldehyde are removed by microbes in the wall.

“It’s like a self-cleaning sponge,” said Alan Darlington, president and founder of Nedlaw Living Walls, a Canadian company. “The garbage is pulled out and biological components break it down into benign constituents.”

Over the course of its life, the living wall can remove pounds or gallons of toxins, Darlington said, and ultimately reduce contaminants in buildings by up to 30 percent.

Darlington began working on the idea for the living wall system as a researcher at the Controlled Environment Systems research facility at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada. He then started his own company in 2000. Nedlaw Living Walls’ first West Coast project was the one in Lebanon, but the company is taking on projects around the U.S.

“These aren’t just pretty plants,” Darlington said. “As far as I know, we’re the first ones taking living walls and trying to make them into a machine that really works to clean the air.”

“Green Spotlight” is a weekly feature on local firms’ best sustainable projects. To submit a project, email greenspotlight@djcOregon.com or call 503-802-7226.

The post Medical school building in Lebanon will have ‘true living wall’ appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

After seeing a soil-free, living wall system at an eco-roof conference in March, Candace Stoughton, the low-impact development specialist at the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District, started thinking about her office on North Williams Avenue.

“We didn’t have a living wall on our property, and at our office we really want to demonstrate all of the different ways to manage rainfall runoff to keep our streams clean and healthy,” Stoughton said.

EMSWCD, a local government group, works to conserve water and keep soil healthy by offering free workshops, reaching out to the public and funding conservation projects.

And the EMSWCD’s new bike shelter is now its first to sport a living wall system, which was installed last week. The technology, developed by a Sequim, Wash.-based company called , is sold in pre-vegetated sheets that can be glued onto any surface.

The startup’s CEO, Roy Hellwig, also works as an architect. He has many ideas for new applications.

“The neat thing about this product is that as long as it gets air and moisture, you can put it anywhere, at any orientation,” Hellwig said. “It doesn’t even need to be mounted – you could put it in the air like a banner, wrap a column with it (or) wrap an entire building with it.”

The flexible mats also can be installed in more conventional living roofs. Peninsula College last year installed 4,600 square feet of the mats on its arts and science building. The roof is now home to a custom variety of epiphytes – plants and lichens that thrive on the water and nutrients they acquire solely from the air.

Although the epiphytic system has never been installed on a wall before, Hellwig said the customized selection of plant species will adjust well to the bike shelter. The walls are mostly living moss, with lichens and licorice fern sprucing up the arrangement. All of the species are native to Oregon, so they adapt well to the climate and require basically no maintenance.

The epiphytic system costs anywhere between $9 and $18, depending on how many ferns and lichens, which cost more, are incorporated. But production costs are continuing to drop, according to Hellwig. Archiphyte’s next goal is to grow the plants on the sheets, and avoid harvesting and transplanting them.

Now that the living roof at Peninsula College has successfully survived a full weather cycle, Hellwig is seeking to expand promotion of the technology and engage in new commercial opportunities.

“These would be cool on freeways – on those concrete walls for sound control,” he said, adding that the backs of billboards and geodesic domes also would be good candidates. “You can put these on forms that could never handle living surfaces before.”

The post Architect dreams big for his soil-free, living wall system appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The agency that owns advertising space on TriMet‘s buses and bus shelters is looking into advertising of the green variety next year.

Lamar Advertising is in talks with TriMet, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and Solterra Systems to install living wall advertisements and eco-roofs at three major TriMet bus stops next year, according to Brad Kleiner, vice president and general manager of Lamar’s Northwest transit division. After seeing bus shelters in Washington, D.C., with eco-roofs, Kleiner wanted to explore planting foliage around some of its bus stop advertising space.

While it’s not a sure thing yet, Solterra Systems has been working with an old TriMet bus shelter to see what alterations are needed to make an eco-roof and living wall work there. Potential bus stops for the project include Rose Quarter Transit Center, PGE Park and a stop in Hillsboro.

“We have to build custom water tanks for a living wall and parapet walls around the roof of the bus shelter to hold dirt for the eco-roof,” said Brian Heather, president of Solterra Systems. “For the living wall advertisement, we’d take everything out of those glass enclosures and perforate the glass so air gets to the plants inside.”

Kleiner said his company will meet with TriMet, Solterra and OMSI in the coming weeks to solidify plans for the planted bus stops.

The post Advertising firm wants living walls at bus stops appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

An affordable housing project being built in Tigard will take a cue from living walls to make a more energy efficient building.

The building, called The Knoll, is being developed by Community Partners for Affordable Housing. To help keep electric bills down for residents, Sheila Fink, executive director of Community Partners, worked with Lando & Associates Landscape Architecture and Carleton Hart Architecture to create a shading structure for the building.

The structure will incorporate plants like a living wall, but the structure will be more like a column. Plants will span the space between the column and the building, creating a sort of living screen that will shade the building. If the building is kept cool, air conditioning will be needed less in the summer, Fink said.

“We explored doing a living wall, but we didn’t want any fear of water penetration,” Fink said. “Instead, we’ll have a freestanding column with leafy vines that will provide the same benefits in terms of energy efficiency.”

The Knoll will be the first housing project built since the city of Tigard created its downtown urban renewal district. It is expected to be completed in March.

The post No wall, but living column used in Tigard project appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Portland State University will soon use the steel frame of a recently demolished building to study living walls.

Different types of green walls will be built in the 800-square-foot space, which was formerly a small building for campus security. The space, called the Ecological Learning Plaza, will be monitored by architecture students and the college’s Green Building Lab. The project is being developed by architecture professor Jeff Schnabel and PSU‘s student-run sustainability club.

“As designers, what we can’t talk about clearly are the cost-benefit analyses of green walls,” Schnabel said. “We can’t tell a developer or building owner how much water those consume. We can’t tell the aesthetic performance over time. With this project, we can get some of those answers.”

Schnabel and the college in September will bring together members of the design community to give input on the research agenda for the learning plaza. Those interested in participating should contact Schnabel at jjsch@pdx.edu.

The post Living walls to be studied at PSU plaza appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building in Portland has been getting a lot of attention lately. Notably, The Washginton Post  Saturday, and TreeHugger  Monday.

The building will feature one of the world’s tallest living walls – 250-foot tall and made up of trellises that extend up the length of the 18-story building.

Howard S. Wright will oversee the construction, which should start this year and take three years to complete.

But as Jetson Green , this is not the first living wall. It’s one of many, many of which have not held up so well.

Here are a few:

• in Pittsburgh. On a 30-story building, the tallest living wall in North America.
• in London. An example of what a green wall looks like when it goes brown.
• in Guelph, Ontario. RAIC Award in 2005.
• in Paris.
• And several more , a company that specializes in living walls.

The post Portland’s Green-Wyatt gets some attention appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building in Portland has been getting a lot of attention lately. Notably, The Washginton Post  Saturday, and TreeHugger  Monday.

The building will feature one of the world’s tallest living walls – 250-foot tall and made up of trellises that extend up the length of the 18-story building.

Howard S. Wright will oversee the construction, which should start this year and take three years to complete.

But as Jetson Green , this is not the first living wall. It’s one of many, many of which have not held up so well.

Here are a few:

• in Pittsburgh. On a 30-story building, the tallest living wall in North America.
• in London. An example of what a green wall looks like when it goes brown.
• in Guelph, Ontario. RAIC Award in 2005.
• in Paris.
• And several more , a company that specializes in living walls.

The post Portland’s Green-Wyatt gets some attention appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.