A spin-off as an effective result of transfer of knowledge and skills in the field of living wall systems

The transfer of the knowledge – developed in research activities – is one of the main missions of the university to spread innovative technologies on the market. The outcomes obtained in a multidisciplinary research project – aimed at designing, prototyping and monitoring a modular living wall system (LWS) with high energy and environmental performance – led to the founding of the Growing Green. Growing Green is a Politecnico di Torino’s spin-off working in cooperation with the University of Turin and hosted by the Innovative Enterprise Incubator I3P (Politecnico di Torino). The development and production of eco-friendly LWSs, closely connected to R&D activities, can be assumed as the Growing Green core business. The spin-off is therefore aimed to place on the construction market low environmental impact LWSs based on: simplified and standardized products; vegetated modular boxes manufactured with a limited number of materials, substructures and installations; a building system characterized by reversible connections. The paper deals with a new way of working within universities in order to achieve a high level of innovation and positive impacts on economy and society. The paper discusses technological and agronomic aspects related to manufacturing (e.g., reduction of material intensity, industrialization of processes), on site assembling (e.g., quick-installing procedures, pre-vegetation, building integration) and maintenance stages (e.g., reduction of water needs and number of pruning per year, automatic control) through the presentation of two case studies (outdoor vs. indoor LWSs).