Living Walls
THIS WEEK THE GREEN APPLE team helped to build a Living Wall at the infamous Gladstone Hotel in downtown Toronto. The installation was part of a two-day training session with Green Living Technologies, a leading North American manufacturer and distributor of Living Roof and Living Wall systems. GLT has hand-picked Green Apple to be their preferred partners in the Greater Toronto Area. So now it’s official: starting in 2010, Green Apple will be designing and building both Living Walls and Living Roofs for our ecologically-minded clients! If you’re interested in having a Living Wall or Living Roof in your own home, give us a call to make a meeting… and let’s discuss it over a pint at the Gladstone!
HERE’S ANOTHER VIDEO THAT we shot at the Cities Alive conference. In this clip, Alan Darlington, Adjunct Professor at the University of Guelph, discusses the results of his research on a number of local Living Walls, to test how effectively they filter out Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOC’s, in enclosed areas. By the end, the walls had performed so well that they exceeded even his own expectations. By combining the science of biofiltration with the floral artwork of Patrick Blanc, Darlington has pioneered a kind of vegitecture, a truly holistic system for human housing. Bravo!
DO YOU THINK IT’S just a coincidence that the Green Apple Living Wall went up exactly twenty years to the day after the Berlin Wall came down? Neither do I, there must be mystical significance to that fact. Let this Living Wall be a powerful symbol for health and equality and freedom, and let it be the cornerstone upon which we build new ecological lives. May we be reminded of relations with the plant kingdom, and may we honour and love them as we honour and love ourselves. Amen! Now, here is a slideshow video of John, Victor and Bob putting up the Green Apple Living Wall. This is how we do it, baby! The accompanying musical track is the instrumental for the song “Be”, by Common. Enjoy!
WOOHOO! WE DID IT! Congratulations are in order. Yesterday we stayed late in order to finish building our new Living Wall. And now it’s done! Doesn’t it look great? Yeah… Now, wouldn’t you like to have one in your own home? If the answer to that question is approaching yes, you really should give us a shout and have us quote you on a job. For the first few lucky customers, we will be building living walls at a discounted rate. So if you’re sincerely interested, don’t dally, take advantage of this awesome opportunity. Either way, you are more than welcome to drop in at any time to say hi and see what the Living Wall looks and feels like!
YEAH, YEAH! USUALLY, it’s a bummer for us when it rains outside, because it puts us behind schedule, since we aren’t able to get any outdoor work done. But when it started to precipitate late night, none of us were very upset — just the opposite — because it meant that we could move forward on the indoor Living Wall project, which is very near and dear to our hearts. Today, Victor and I went to pick up the 120 individual plants, six score from 16 different varieties. And wouldn’t you know it, just when we’re loading up to transport the tropical plants across town, it starts to snow outside! Well, no matter; instead of laying them in the back of the flatbed truck, we packed the plants with us into the crowded cabin, and hightailed it back to Green Apple HQ. Big thanks to Musa, plant prophet, for all of the help picking and choosing the plants that are most appropriate. Stay tuned to see what we did with them…
