Peter Lund Christensen from Ramboll was kind enough to contact me about the massive Green Wall he helped build in Copenhagen. The European Environmental Agency (EEA) commissioned the project and Johanna Rossbach – http://www.rossbach.dk had the idea for the façade. The entire greenwall is a massive map of Europe.

Denmark Green wall

Green Fortune is a Swedish based company that made the green wall system (felt pockets and water pipes etc.) Green Fortune usually makes indoor systems, but adapted to fit the needs of this outdoor wall. Over 5000 plants were planted from May 19 to May 21 2010 and the result is stunning.

Planting the Green wall

Steel frames and felt pockets

Gardener Lars Birck from KU.LIFE (University of Copenhagen, faculty of life sciences) carefully picked the plants that would grow best on greenwall. Professor Johannes Kollmann delivered the biodiversity map of Europe they interpreted with the 22 different species of plants. KULIFE has a fantastic botanical garden that you may want to see: http://www.gf.life.ku.dk/Haven.aspx

Peter, who designed the steel facade, explains a bit about the design and process:

One of the challenges, initially, was that the façade wasn't allowed to touch the ground, so we chose to hang it onto the wall, this is a gross section of the steel columns at the place where vertical load is transferred to the building:

The system is made of 6 columns where 36 steel frames span between. The bottom flange in each of the frames is made of U shaped steel beam, the profiles are angled so they also functions as gutters, there is placed down pipes at all the columns leading the water to the bottom of the facade. At the bottom level the water is collected in a stainless steel gutter and let to the sewage drain.

Steel trellis drawing

Due to work environmental regulations there has to be a certain amount of daylight in the offices so they put up these half perforated banners (like the ones used for advertisement banners) and got the photos of the plant in the specific "biodiversity zone" printed on them, so that it would let the map of Europe be more pronounced to the spectators. All in all, the project looks fantastic.

Living wall banner

Greenwall of Europe