IDENTIFICATION OF FACTORS THAT AFFECT THE MAINTAINABILITY OF VERTICAL GREENERY SYSTEM

Abstract

With the rising concern on the need for a sustainable environment, there is an increasing trend of incorporating vertical greenery on building façades. Vertical greeneries indeed do bring many benefits to the urban environment such as reducing the effect of Urban Heat Island (UHI) and improving the aesthetic quality for the building. Hence, it is common to see natural vegetation tapping on building façades in urban areas. Despite the increasing trend of installing vertical greenery on building façades, vertical greenery technology is still at its infancy stage due to the lack of expertise pertaining to the maintenance of vertical greenery. Hence, this dissertation aims to identify the factors that affect the maintenance of the external vertical greenery system. Interviews with vertical greenery expertises was carried out to gather their perception on issues concerning the maintenance of vertical greenery. After which, various types of vertical greenery system were discussed to better understand the maintainability of the vertical greenery wall. Subsequently, the various types of vertical greenery were compared with a set of comparison variables to find out which vertical greenery system requires high level of maintenance, and vice versa. This dissertation could be used as a reference to allow building expertises to understand factors that hinder maintenance of vertical greenery system which would directly affect the success of vertical greenery wall.