Technological and agronomic aspects in BIV design: case studies

The solutions of Building Integrated Vegetation (BIV) in urban areas are a way of responding - from an economic, ecological and social point of view - to the challenges related to the paradigms of resilience, adaptability and transformability of anthropized areas. The paper deals with an experience of technological transfer aimed at developing a new sustainable and performing modular Living Wall System (LWS). A multidisciplinary study was carried out by agronomists and architects, with the partnership of a small enterprise for material recycling, a nursery specialized in new technologies and finally a leading enterprise in advanced wall systems. The outcomes obtained in the multidisciplinary research project led to the founding of the Growing Green. Growing Green is a Politecnico di Torino’s Spin-off working in cooperation with University of Turin. The development and production of ecofriendly 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 the presentation of case studies and 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).