Mark and Andrew over at Lake Street Landscape Supply are working on a Living Wall system. The idea is that you cover some portion of the facade of a building with about four inches of growing media, held up by a fabricated module system, allowing you to grow gobs of plants right there on the side of that building. Why would you do that? Because it will help insulate, protect the brick, clean the air and look really freakin’ cool. Very few of these things exist anywhere in the world, mostly on art museums and other high dollar buildings. This will be the first installation on any industrial structure.
We’ll get half of the cost covered with the help of some Small Business Improvement Fund money, the rest will come out of my hide. Since this will be a Beta test of the system, Andrew and Mark will trim out any profit they had hoped to make in order to get the thing going. We should all get piles of press and notoriety from this, presumably leading to more installations. I’ve always tried to be an incubator for testing new green stuff.
Meanwhile, I’m about to start mounting the stainless steel brackets to hold nine pieces of aircraft cable, stretched around the top of the south facade, which will support vines as part of a “green cornice”. There are still a few technical difficulties to iron out, but I’m certain it will work.
If anyone wants to help with the living wall installation, let me know. info@plantchicago.com
