Living Walls for Future Sustainable Buildings and Cities

A building envelope is recognized by the professionals as the key element in achieving the energy and climate goals set in the EU. Therefore, in recent years, a lot of effort has been invested in the research and development of multifunctional and adaptive building envelopes, which enables greater exploitation of the energy potential of the outdoor environment and thus significantly improves buildings’ energy efficiency, while at the same time provides improved living comfort in buildings and in urban environment. In the latter, the vegetated building envelopes are particularly interesting due to the numerous environmental benefits and the proven improvements of microclimatic conditions and living comfort in cities. In addition, they address some of the other priority areas of the European Commission's Green Deal, such as: biodiversity, water pollution reduction and green European cities. The proposed interdisciplinary project also pursues the following sustainable development objectives: Sustainable cities and communities, Clean water and sanitation, Affordable and clean energy, Good health and well-being, Climate action and Industry, innovation and infrastructure. However, at living walls there is still a big gap between the conceptual design, the actual performance, and the integral evaluation of energy and water flows, and impacts on the urban and indoor environment, and that living wall technology is not sustainable in terms of water and nutrient use. In this interdisciplinary project scientist from the research areas of process engineering, energy, civil engineering, water management and biology will participate. The project will be based on related research of energy efficiency and sustainable use of water resources and nutrients in living walls. The project represents the continuation and upgrade of successful industrial research projects, research of young researchers and completed ARRS research projects. In particular, we will deal with research problems, for which literature review and previous research of consortium shows that they are not satisfactorily and comprehensively researched. The objective of the project is to develop an energy and environmentally efficient living wall system with multifunctional properties. With in-situ measurements, thermal response of living walls will be researched at real, as well as at extreme boundary conditions. The final goal is to develop a detailed, validated, mathematical model of thermal and hydrological response of living walls. The model will be an important contribution to the scientific community and will serve as the basis for further research and development of living walls. We will also explore the potential and possibilities of using alternative sources of irrigation and fertilization of living walls, such as grey wastewater from buildings and rainwater, in order to reduce or completely eliminate the use of drinking water and mineral fertilizers. We will also design and analyse a greywater heat recovery system supported by a micro-heat pump. The potential of living walls as a greywater treatment plant will also be explored, which would enable its reuse in the building. In order to maximize living wall’s performance, algorithms for efficient and sustainable irrigation, based on weather forecast, will also be developed. The final goal of the project is to put living walls in a group of sustainable, energy-efficient and cost-effective technologies. The project’s co-funding company Knauf Insuation is an important provider of Urbanscape lightweight extensive green roofs system in the global market. The expected effects of the new knowledge and project results for the co-financier will be the expansion of production and improved global competitiveness with integrated solutions of energy efficient and sustainable green building envelopes, digital tools to support design and marketing and possibility of obtaining demanding projects with the highest added value.