How This Engineer Is Bringing Biodiversity Back Into Our Cities
Sourced from Forbes
Nature is disappearing at an alarming rate, with the built environment acknowledged as a significant contributor to the decline of biodiversity. Scientists are predicting that on our current trajectory of habitat loss and global warming, nearly 40% of all species will face extinction by the end of this century. It’s a scary prospect, one that prompted construction engineer Alistair Law to devise a solution for returning nature and biodiversity to our largest cities.
As a facade engineer at global design firm Arup for several years, Law has worked on some exciting design and construction projects, including Google’s new London headquarters. But in 2013, while living in Paris, he came up with the idea for his business Vertical Meadow, which creates native wildflower and grass meadow living walls designed to green buildings and enhance city biodiversity.
“The concept of living walls wasn’t new, but it was being done in a very controlled way,” says Law. “Most suppliers were pre-growing plants and then sticking them in pots on walls, which looked great on day one but worse as time went on, with the plants often dying. I was more interested in how we could bring greening into cities more meaningfully and integrate it with existing constructed systems?”
Instead of sourcing and transporting live plants to the site, Law’s idea was to grow them from seed in place, reducing costs and making the process more sustainable. After experimenting with different materials, he started testing in Paris and came up with a system for growing grasses and clovers that could adorn scaffolding and other building structures.
From the Living Architecture Monitor
