GREEN VERTICAL STEEL WALL DESIGN

ongoing

The new trend opened worldwide with the Green Deal politics is enhancing topics such as sustainability and Natural Based Solutions to be adopted in cities for climate control and inhabitants’ wellbeing. Green walls technology fits to this purpose and is widely spreading all-over. As in the case of curtain walls, steel allows reduced sizes for mullions and transoms, enhancing the architectural aspects and represents the ideal material to be used for the structural parts of the green walls. The competitor materials, such as aluminium and/or FRPs, are however less corrosion prone, and might be preferred to steel, an event representing a big economical loss for the Steel Industry, limiting its penetration in this growing market. The aim of AGREENSTEEL is to provide information ready to be applied by the Steel Industry. The lack of design standards is presently a problem for the design of the structural parts of green-walls. Research is needed to produce experimental evidence leading to the formulation of design guidelines in terms of Seismic design, Wind design and Corrosion design. These guidelines might lead in the future to the formulation of a harmonized product standard. The main idea is that, once established a trend in a technology (representing a market sector) the designers (both Architects/Landscape Architects and Structural Engineers) are reluctant to change it, as the more they apply some design concepts the more they become confident in them. So, the sooner Steel will be recognised as the optimal material for green wall applications (supported by research results and design guidelines) the better will be in terms of establishing a dominant position in the market, hence in terms of economic benefits for the Steel Industry. Such objective can be achieved only through a cooperation among Steel Industry, Green Walls Producers, Professional Architects/Landscape Architects/Botanists and Structural Engineers, as well as Research Laboratories and Institutions.