Energy and Buildings 79 (2014) 155–163

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Energy and Buildings

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enbuild

Modeling the energy performance of living walls: Validation against

field measurements in temperate climate
Massimiliano Scarpa, Ugo Mazzali ∗ , Fabio Peron
Department of Design and Planning in Complex Environments, IUAV University of Venice, Dorsoduro 2206, 31023 Venice, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In recent years living walls have increasingly spread, thus becoming a diffuse architectural envelope
Received 30 September 2013 cladding technology. Consequently, a more precise understanding of their thermal behavior and impact
Accepted 8 April 2014 on the building energy balance are needed. One of the most important effects provided by the use of living
Available online 2 May 2014
walls is the shading of the building envelope, with clear benefits during the cooling period. Furthermore,
many features characterize the thermal behavior of living walls, namely plant species, leaf area index
Keywords:
(LAI), evapotranspiration, emissivity and air cavity type. All these particular characteristics have been
Living walls
accounted in the mathematical model developed in the frame of the presented research, whose aim is to
Energy simulations
Sustainability
provide a tool for the prediction of the thermal behavior of living walls. Two kinds of living walls, one with
Model validation grass and closed air cavity and the other one with vertical garden and open air cavity were considered. The
results achieved by means of the developed model show a good agreement with the measurements also
supported by model efficiency indexes such as Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency index (NSEC). Values of around
0.7 were obtained for the NSEC index for both the investigated living walls.
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction in the mean surface temperatures can be achieved in tropical cli-

Living walls are becoming a diffuse architectural cladding and a
more precise understanding of their thermal behavior and impact
on the building energy consumption is needed. The most impor-
tant effect provided by the use of living walls is the shading of the
building envelope, with clear benefits during summer. Moreover,
a great amount of latent heat is released by the plants due to the
evapotranspiration phenomenon, and this clearly distinguishes liv-
ing walls from other shading devices. Stec et al. [1] observed that
about 60% of the absorbed solar radiation is converted into latent
heat through the evapotranspiration. Consequently, the tempera-
ture of the leaves in living walls is about 35% less if compared to
the temperature in a standard shading device, passing from 35 ◦ C
to 55 ◦ C respectively.
The main topic of this paper consists in the assessment of the
actual effects of living walls on the building wall energy balance.
This is an open research field and several interesting studies are
being published. The main effect of living walls consists in the
consequent shading, able to strongly reduce temperature of the
building envelope on the external surface. A reduction of 10–12 K
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0412571302.
E-mail address: mazzali@iuav.it (U. Mazzali).
mates, with a consequent reduction in cooling loads around 10% in a
typical office building with standard fenestration [2]. In particular,
Cheng et al. [3] showed that the temperature difference between
the green layer and the ambient air can reach values up to around
14 K during hot afternoons in a typical Hong Kong summer.
However, the effects of the evapotranspiration phenomenon on
the indoor environment cooling loads is usually weakened due to
the air cavity (ventilated or not ventilated) installed between the
wall and the cladding itself.
Further analyses on surface temperatures of living walls were
performed, in temperate climates, by Mazzali et al. [4]. The authors
showed surface temperature differences around 20 K between the
bare external wall and the external wall covered by a living wall.
Other interesting studies on the shading efficiency of living walls
were conducted by Jim and He [5]. This study monitored six
different surfaces defining the correlation between the cladding
solar radiation transmittance performance and its transmission and
reflection properties. The study shows the strong shading effect
of the vegetation. For example, a surface temperature reduction
up to 9 K and a solar radiation reduction of 50% were recorded.
Furthermore the hourly global average solar radiation difference
between front side and back side of the living wall was found
to be 31.5 W m−2 in the south wall and 11.4 W m−2 in the north
wall.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2014.04.014
0378-7788/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.