Cities are particularly affected by the consequences of climate change. Due to their large-scale concrete surfaces, they heat up more than their surroundings in summer – urban heat island (UHI) - and are full of fine dust and noise. This is happening at an increasing rate. The proportion of people living in densely built-up areas rose from 34% to 54% between 1960 and 2014.
To improve the quality of life, metropolitan areas can be vertically greened. Large-area plant carpets in front of buildings and in open spaces enable a reduction of fine dust pollution in a street canyon usually by 10 to 20 %. The sound level from ambient and traffic noise sources can be reduced by up to 10 dB(A) if the distance from the noise source is sufficient.
Furthermore, the proportion of green spaces has an influence on the UHI, along with other city-related parameters such as solar radiation, the ratio between height and width of street canyons, and thermal mass. For very dense urban centers such as Hong Kong or Melbourne, temperature reductions due to urban greening of up to 10°C have been modeled /1/.
Plants also produce O2 and sequester CO2. At its peak productivity, a tree can absorb up to 60 kg of the climate-damaging gas per year /2/.
In addition to these positive effects, green facades offer another invaluable advantage in view of the densely populated inner cities: they require almost no ground area for growth.
The Office for Micro Climate Cultivation, or OMC°C for short, shows how this can be done.
The young company is developing a scalable, seasonally managed product system for the vertical greening of urban spaces and is focusing on a series solution. "Through the modular and flexibly adaptable design, we create serial greenery and bring shady and cooling biomass into cities," says Nicola Stattmann, Director & Founder / Product Development & Technology of OMC°C.
The innovation is based on annual, fast-growing climbing plants and nets made of flax, which were produced on a warp knitting machine with weft insertion from KARL MAYER Technische Textilien. At ITMA 2023 in Milan, the KARL MAYER GROUP will be showing a greened net on its stand, in Hall 4 / B 119 in the Fiera Milano Rho.