The bio-filter “living wall” at the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) in Burlington, Ont. has won an Award of Excellence from Green Roofs for Healthy Cities.
TORONTO
The bio-filter “living wall” at the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) in Burlington, Ont. has won an Award of Excellence from Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. The presentation was made at the Cities Alive conference in Vancouver.
Two, 230-square-foot living walls frame the Camilla and Peter Dalglish Atrium at the Royal Botanical Gardens, which is a major tourist attraction and horticultural centre located on a 980-hectare nature sanctuary.
Living walls filter and humidify indoor air and improve the performance of a building’s mechanical heating and cooling systems. Judges singled out the RBG living wall for an innovative design feature that harvests rainwater for irrigation and saves water consumption, which can be a problem with green walls.
“Essentially, this living wall is a vertical hydroponic garden where rainwater from the building roof is collected into a 12,000-litre cistern and circulated by a pump system to irrigate the plants,” said Mike Szabo, a principal at Diamond + Schmitt Architects, the project architects. “As water is absorbed into the plants, the system is replenished with water from the cistern.”
The RBG living wall was also recognized for its role in educating the public on the benefits of this Canadian-made technology. Diamond + Schmitt Architects in collaboration with NEDLAW Living Walls installed the first commercial bio-filter living wall at the University of Guelph-Humber campus in 2004 and have since added this green feature to dozens of projects, with some walls up to four storeys high.
DCN News Services
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