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The shortage of land in many cities has also led to a scarcity of natural vegetation in urban settings. But a new architectural system from Vertical Landscapes (VL) seeks to invite nature back into our cities on a broader scale. Their system transforms buildings into columns of vegetation to help clean the city air and possibly even produce small scale crops, all while retaining the building’s usual use for office or housing space.

Vertical Landscape’s Vertical Ecosystem Structure (VES) is a freestanding structure that takes the form of a critical architectural component, a load-bearing, shear, utility wall. When incorporated into a larger structure it will absorb the building’s loads and create conditions for vegetation to prosper. The VES contains all the irrigation and drainage piping and mechanical systems required, which can be customized to meet the needs of different types of vegetation and allow plants to be micro-managed to provide the optimum growing environment.

Since the VES is a freestanding structure it can be built adjacent to an existing wall. And although an add-on VES could be designed to look like a seamless part of an existing structure, developer Nelson Hyde Chick says that a VES is best implemented as part of a new construction.

Chick also says that opting for a vertical landscape provides a number of advantages over rooftop gardens by:

• allowing the rooftop to remain reserved for solar panels;
• providing a potentially larger area for vegetation – particularly as the height of the building increases;
• reducing the risk of water damage since water in a vertical landscape can be mitigated much more easily and cheaply than if a leak occurred in the membrane between the roof and the vegetation of a rooftop garden;
• allowing for heavier and more diverse types of vegetation, since the additional load of the vegetation is already on the wall, whereas a rooftop garden transfers the weight to the structure’s load-bearing, shear walls;
• enabling the creation of microclimates based on the orientation of the VES to the sun. For example, an architect in Phoenix, Arizona could place the VES structure facing the southeast to receive the mild morning sun, but be shielded from the harsh afternoon rays. Therefore vegetation that would be exposed to the sun all day on a rooftop garden and not usually suited to the Arizona climate would be able to prosper.　

The Vertical Ecosystem Structure from Vertical Landscapes  might give a city a touch of that post-apocalyptic, nature-reclaims-city look, but anything that adds a splash of green to city centers while cleaning the air has to look good. With many cities around the globe striving to go green, here’s a way to do it literally.