Thriving ivy on office buildings and universities brings some green to the scene, but what if you could actually build institutions and even houses with living modular wall tiles? This concept might sound too futuristic for our modern times, but a Spanish ceramic tile company called Ceracasa has brought this green architecture innovation to the mainstream.
Imagine buildings possessing both natural and industrial characteristics — the fresh green grass from the ground also found on the sides of multiple-story apartment complexes and offices. There would no longer be a lack of nature and greenery in cities, but Ceracasa’s Lifewall does more than simply improve aesthetics. Lifewall is a tile engineered to support a wide range of drip-irrigated plants, and it’s created specifically to work in harmony with Ceracasa’s Bionictile. Bionictile is another type of tile that filters pollution out of the air (particularly the nitrogen oxides from automobiles) using the sun’s UV rays and moisture in the atmosphere to turn it into fertilizer for the plants on the Lifewall tiles.
It’s similar to the symbiotic relationship that plants have in your backyard garden: Certain plants support others and vice versa. It’s a beautiful process in the garden, but on a grander scale with these “living” tiles.
Lifewall’s designer, Emilio Llobat, is marketing this tile globally and is opening the door to more contemporary and sustainable building designs. Bionictile is available in white, ivory, tobacco and gray, and is a low-maintenance ceramic tile. When working in conjunction with Lifewall tiles, the two create an eye-catching modular design and live vertical garden on buildings — it’s sustainability, architecture and art wrapped up into one.
More than 800 distributors across Spain sell Ceracasa products, and the company also has main international distributors. In order to install these ceramic tiles, a strong adhesive source or grout must be used to secure the tiles to a wall or exterior structure, and Ceracasa provides step-by-step instructions online.
But how eco-friendly are the Lifewall and Bionictile? According to Ceracasa, if about 200 buildings used these tiles, more than 400,000 people could breathe clean air free from nitrogen oxides for one year. The more buildings structured with these tiles, the less pollution in the air. As rooftop gardens have become increasingly popular for the urban gardener, Ceracasa is raising the bar and going sky high to reduce pollution in the city with Lifewall.
Bring Wall Tile to Life, Literally
One Spanish company is making visually stunning, pollution-zapping building tiles that could have a major impact in cities around the world.