Item — HN Reader

Great idea, but I hope they have provisioned for a lot of expensive care and maintenance to keep the living walls alive, otherwise they'll end up with a dead living wall like the one in Paradise Park in London[0].

[0] https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/home/paradise-park-livin... or https://www.standard.co.uk/news/the-living-wall-of-islington...

3 comments

There's a living wall by Old Street roundabout (on a WeWork no less!) that's survived the first year ok.

https://goo.gl/maps/X5h4qrwHQZcmFAxa7

It's grown in a bit since the Streetview was taken, and is still in very good health.

This isn’t a small government run building where finding the right talent and money to fix a failed pump system is a big deal.

But it is at a much larger scale, even far more than the Singapore example others posted. So they better not cheap out on the watering and maintenance tech/budget.

Yes, I'd imagine a hotel in central London would also have more incentive to keep it going. Maybe in the past 10 years the technology and/or understanding has improved too.

There's a much smaller scale one on a private residence that I pass most days that the owner (or new owner) has given up on though. There's something very sad about it, like it symbolises lofty dreams for a greener future that have withered and died.

With the right plants and a watering system, the upkeep shouldn't be insane.