Nature Within the Concrete Jungle

I found this really interesting article in the Arup blog called “Green building envelopes for lower city temperatures” that addressed the benefits of green “envelopes” in buildings and how this could even be applied to existing structures to maximize the benefit of cities with lower emissions, temperature and pollution.

To better understand why it is necessary to compensate for the green areas that are destroyed in cities to make room for the expansion of the urban core, it is necessary to review the basic concept of energy equilibrium; when the radiation of the sun enters the atmosphere, a large part of it is consumed by the photosynthesis of natural elements, by removing the “green”, we are letting a lot of energy without being consumed that translates to higher temperatures in this places (urban cores). This is why in order to maintain a sustainable growth of our cities, we need to start thinking about compensating this condition, creating a green envelope that covers the facades of our structures helps to maintain the natural element that will regulate the temperature and oxygen levels within our cities.

In the last decade, green construction has passed from being in a necessary plane to a luxury one, being offered as an amenity by developers and architects as a selling point of projects. We need to remember that this movement was born as a result of a necessity to ensure a better quality of life of the habitants of cities and thus we need to go back to when sustainable practices where a must, not a plus.