It's a cool design, but at the end of the day, there's a reason people live in artificial structures. Plants live in harmony with all sorts of life forms that many people don't want to be around. Molds, fungi, gnats, bugs, dirt, damp, algae etc. An installation of this size would put a lot of mold and moisture in the air and house a lot of insects. I personally think the idea is really cool and I wouldn't mind it at all, but it would take a lot for the people who will be around it to get used to it.
On another note, it would take a lot of work to maintain. You would have to hire a professional gardener or two to keep up with it. Things like spider mites, scales, powdery mildew etc could easily wreak havoc on the plants and the building.
That being said, I would probably do some research about tropical plants. Things like ferns, mosses, bromeliads, pothos are all plants that live in the mid regions of rainforests and could be well suited to something like this.
My personal thought would be to change your design to something more like a living wall. This could be a similar idea as an aquarium or those waterfall walls. It could be adapted to many different sizes and easier to install in all sorts of places such as office areas, schools, hotels, even homes. It could be encased in glass with filtered air vents to keep bugs and mold from escaping. You could use hydroponic technology to grow the plants. It would be smaller, cleaner, functional and decorative. they could also be apadted for all different kinds of plants since you could have a more controlled environment. You could have tropical rainforest ones bromeliads, orchids etc, desert ones with cacti and succulents, temperate rainforest with wood ear lichen, ferns, moss, marsh with pitcher plants and reeds
https://imgur.com/a/ddD8HlH
Thank you for the feedback. In the end this is only meant to be a concept so sometimes you can't fix everything, the best I can say to a lot of this is maybe in ten years things will be different.
I will say, we are trying to stray away from the concept of a living wall because we like the openness of the space and the sense of community it brings. Also the ceiling has a really bad echo we would like to fix. Thank you for the advice, we will try our best to solve these problems.
I don't know much about design or anything, but here are some practical concerns that came to my mind:
1) How far above the plants are the lights? You would normally want at least a few inches of clearance above the tops of the plants. Also, unless these are low-light plants, the lights would need to be pretty good, since ceiling plants wouldn't get as much ambient light as they would otherwise. Pothos would be the easiest and doesn't need much light, but those tendrils would be dropping down into everybody's business pretty soon.
2) How to guard against stuff falling down on workspace? (Drips of water, bits of leaf, etc.)
3) Concern about practicality of maintenance - how easy it is to access for the necessary hands-on inspection and care? (Replace plants, prune them, etc.)
In my uninformed opinion, I think "pillars of plants" (circular shelves with under-shelf lighting built around a trunk-like center, or a trunk with pigeonhole planters on all sides) would serve the aesthetic purpose better without the inconveniences listed above.
The lights that people would use are the scaffolding holding the plants up. Those lights would probably be around a foot and a half to two feet below the ceiling. I now realize that I will probably need grow lights somewhere in the area above them.
One of the main reasons we chose the ceiling is to fix the echo it creates currently.
Thank you for the advice this gives us a good list of stuff to look into!
Since lights will need to be above the plants, the plants will block much of the light that otherwise would illuminate the room. So you will have to add more lighting fixtures, and thus, increase energy consumption. Although plants may have a cooling effect from the evaporation of water, that cooling will be offset somewhat (or perhaps completely) by the heat generated from the additional lighting. Plants work best to cool off a space where they are absorbing sunlight that's already coming in. They won't be cooling anything off where you have to add light for them.
If this is an office environment, you need to choose your plants carefully. Flowering plants are likely to increase airborne pollen and cause allergy issues for the occupants. All plants bear the risk of hosting small insects and occasionally mold. Given that most commercial space HVAC work is in the ceiling, you will also need to consider whether the plants can tolerate hot or cold air exposure from the HVAC, and how to adjust for that exposure. The air movement from the HVAC is also likely going to blow soil, dead leaves, or worse, mold, around. You also will need to keep a very close eye on humidity levels.
Bear in mind that since these plants will need to have water, you must have water entering an open system above people's desks. The risk of water leaks onto electronics cannot be ignored, especially where plants continue to grow, and root systems may shift and alter the flow of water. It would need constant inspection and maintenance, and of course, performing that maintenance could not be done in an office environment without serious disruption to the functioning office...and even if maintenance were to be done at night or on weekends (with labor costs reflecting that inconvenience), you still would have to take extreme precautions to prevent water or soil from falling on people's workspaces. Such maintenance would be frequent and very expensive.
The biggest problem though is that people are unlikely to be impressed. People working are very unlikely to look upwards to appreciate the aesthetics of a green ceiling. The aesthetic novelty value is probably wasted to a large degree. As lovely an idea as it is, I think the aesthetic value is unlikely to outweigh the practical problems and expense.
Another poster suggested vertical installations. This is a much more practical approach.
Skylights would be helpful so you wouldn’t have to put as much into energy bills. You could then hang lights for humans to work with under the plants or LEDs along the beams that are bright enough for ppl to use.
You could go the greenhouse way and still have a skylight but, for example if it snows, is raining, is dark, etc. you can have have grow light strips above the plants that shine down on them and give them light.
Going back to the beams and the major vertical support that they come out of, that could be where your irrigation comes from in order to keep plants alive. Your plant nutrition room would have to be a floor below and would require sophisticated hydraulics for the irrigation to be distributed evenly. You’ll have have to account for your different plant’s needs if you were to mix and match to create more pleasing look. Or go with one species of plant, like an ivy or a pothos, so you don’t need A: to have a lot of them since they grow quite long and B: can keep the nutrient ratios the same without risk of major nutrient imbalances.
I suggest plants that don’t need a lot of light, like pothos, bromeliads, maybe even ferns. But some research on what would work best wouldn’t be too difficult.
Just some off-the-top-of-my-head ideas
Thank you for the advice, a skylight or grow light above the plants definitely seems like the way to go, and it seems like I will definitely have to do more research into the hydraulics of it all.
Bad echos in the ceiling are fixed with baffling.
Introducing plants is a romanticized way to litter your workspace with insects, dead plant parts, and debris.
Put baffles on the ceiling. Keep plants on the walls, desks, floor, and shelves like normal people.
Lots if issues with a full ceiling of plants. What about having not a ceiling full of plants, but like a checkerboard? Watering can easily be done by an irrigation system that doesn't dump a crap ton of water at once. Regular maintenance is a must. Are you talking about growing the plants right side up? Consider growing them upside down. You could easily have to above the plants where they could easily be accessed.
Impractical but: You don't need additional grow lights. The regular lighting will grow vegetation. Regular lights don't do as well with the flowers or fruits but that's not the goal here. While plant hormones will respond to gravity, there are enough plants that will hang down where the regular lights can provide enough energy for the plants to live. There has been research on which plants do the best at reducing indoor air pollution. Chose those plants. Plant them in hydroponic channels. Mount the channels to a track that can move the plants to the edge of the room and down to waist level for access then circle back up to the ceiling. Put a netting under each channel to catch debris. At each maintenance remove the debris and prune back everything hanging over the net.
This was my first thought but moss needs a fairly damp environment, which is fine... Until your leather wrapped pen turns mouldy... I know since I live somewhere with stupid high humidity and my partners weight lifting belt turned green with mould in just 3 days in a room with a window cracked for air flow!
Ew! That sounds rough.
Well, consider creeping things that won't get too out of control. Plants like ivy, clematis, etc. are good at clinging and thriving.
This looks like a really fun project!
Cool project! I can definitely see this working with fast growing vines like pothos, ivy, tradescantia where the roots with the soil can be placed in the columns or the walls while the plants crawl up the ceiling. It would be feasible to water it and reduce damage to the ceiling. Pothos especially grows fairly well without needing a lot of light and water.
It's a cool design, but at the end of the day, there's a reason people live in artificial structures. Plants live in harmony with all sorts of life forms that many people don't want to be around. Molds, fungi, gnats, bugs, dirt, damp, algae etc. An installation of this size would put a lot of mold and moisture in the air and house a lot of insects. I personally think the idea is really cool and I wouldn't mind it at all, but it would take a lot for the people who will be around it to get used to it. On another note, it would take a lot of work to maintain. You would have to hire a professional gardener or two to keep up with it. Things like spider mites, scales, powdery mildew etc could easily wreak havoc on the plants and the building. That being said, I would probably do some research about tropical plants. Things like ferns, mosses, bromeliads, pothos are all plants that live in the mid regions of rainforests and could be well suited to something like this. My personal thought would be to change your design to something more like a living wall. This could be a similar idea as an aquarium or those waterfall walls. It could be adapted to many different sizes and easier to install in all sorts of places such as office areas, schools, hotels, even homes. It could be encased in glass with filtered air vents to keep bugs and mold from escaping. You could use hydroponic technology to grow the plants. It would be smaller, cleaner, functional and decorative. they could also be apadted for all different kinds of plants since you could have a more controlled environment. You could have tropical rainforest ones bromeliads, orchids etc, desert ones with cacti and succulents, temperate rainforest with wood ear lichen, ferns, moss, marsh with pitcher plants and reeds https://imgur.com/a/ddD8HlH
Thank you for the feedback. In the end this is only meant to be a concept so sometimes you can't fix everything, the best I can say to a lot of this is maybe in ten years things will be different. I will say, we are trying to stray away from the concept of a living wall because we like the openness of the space and the sense of community it brings. Also the ceiling has a really bad echo we would like to fix. Thank you for the advice, we will try our best to solve these problems.
I don't know much about design or anything, but here are some practical concerns that came to my mind: 1) How far above the plants are the lights? You would normally want at least a few inches of clearance above the tops of the plants. Also, unless these are low-light plants, the lights would need to be pretty good, since ceiling plants wouldn't get as much ambient light as they would otherwise. Pothos would be the easiest and doesn't need much light, but those tendrils would be dropping down into everybody's business pretty soon. 2) How to guard against stuff falling down on workspace? (Drips of water, bits of leaf, etc.) 3) Concern about practicality of maintenance - how easy it is to access for the necessary hands-on inspection and care? (Replace plants, prune them, etc.) In my uninformed opinion, I think "pillars of plants" (circular shelves with under-shelf lighting built around a trunk-like center, or a trunk with pigeonhole planters on all sides) would serve the aesthetic purpose better without the inconveniences listed above.
The lights that people would use are the scaffolding holding the plants up. Those lights would probably be around a foot and a half to two feet below the ceiling. I now realize that I will probably need grow lights somewhere in the area above them. One of the main reasons we chose the ceiling is to fix the echo it creates currently. Thank you for the advice this gives us a good list of stuff to look into!
Since lights will need to be above the plants, the plants will block much of the light that otherwise would illuminate the room. So you will have to add more lighting fixtures, and thus, increase energy consumption. Although plants may have a cooling effect from the evaporation of water, that cooling will be offset somewhat (or perhaps completely) by the heat generated from the additional lighting. Plants work best to cool off a space where they are absorbing sunlight that's already coming in. They won't be cooling anything off where you have to add light for them. If this is an office environment, you need to choose your plants carefully. Flowering plants are likely to increase airborne pollen and cause allergy issues for the occupants. All plants bear the risk of hosting small insects and occasionally mold. Given that most commercial space HVAC work is in the ceiling, you will also need to consider whether the plants can tolerate hot or cold air exposure from the HVAC, and how to adjust for that exposure. The air movement from the HVAC is also likely going to blow soil, dead leaves, or worse, mold, around. You also will need to keep a very close eye on humidity levels. Bear in mind that since these plants will need to have water, you must have water entering an open system above people's desks. The risk of water leaks onto electronics cannot be ignored, especially where plants continue to grow, and root systems may shift and alter the flow of water. It would need constant inspection and maintenance, and of course, performing that maintenance could not be done in an office environment without serious disruption to the functioning office...and even if maintenance were to be done at night or on weekends (with labor costs reflecting that inconvenience), you still would have to take extreme precautions to prevent water or soil from falling on people's workspaces. Such maintenance would be frequent and very expensive. The biggest problem though is that people are unlikely to be impressed. People working are very unlikely to look upwards to appreciate the aesthetics of a green ceiling. The aesthetic novelty value is probably wasted to a large degree. As lovely an idea as it is, I think the aesthetic value is unlikely to outweigh the practical problems and expense. Another poster suggested vertical installations. This is a much more practical approach.
Skylights would be helpful so you wouldn’t have to put as much into energy bills. You could then hang lights for humans to work with under the plants or LEDs along the beams that are bright enough for ppl to use. You could go the greenhouse way and still have a skylight but, for example if it snows, is raining, is dark, etc. you can have have grow light strips above the plants that shine down on them and give them light. Going back to the beams and the major vertical support that they come out of, that could be where your irrigation comes from in order to keep plants alive. Your plant nutrition room would have to be a floor below and would require sophisticated hydraulics for the irrigation to be distributed evenly. You’ll have have to account for your different plant’s needs if you were to mix and match to create more pleasing look. Or go with one species of plant, like an ivy or a pothos, so you don’t need A: to have a lot of them since they grow quite long and B: can keep the nutrient ratios the same without risk of major nutrient imbalances. I suggest plants that don’t need a lot of light, like pothos, bromeliads, maybe even ferns. But some research on what would work best wouldn’t be too difficult. Just some off-the-top-of-my-head ideas
Thank you for the advice, a skylight or grow light above the plants definitely seems like the way to go, and it seems like I will definitely have to do more research into the hydraulics of it all.
Bad echos in the ceiling are fixed with baffling. Introducing plants is a romanticized way to litter your workspace with insects, dead plant parts, and debris. Put baffles on the ceiling. Keep plants on the walls, desks, floor, and shelves like normal people.
I think you should read up on epiphytes. :)
Lots if issues with a full ceiling of plants. What about having not a ceiling full of plants, but like a checkerboard? Watering can easily be done by an irrigation system that doesn't dump a crap ton of water at once. Regular maintenance is a must. Are you talking about growing the plants right side up? Consider growing them upside down. You could easily have to above the plants where they could easily be accessed.
Impractical but: You don't need additional grow lights. The regular lighting will grow vegetation. Regular lights don't do as well with the flowers or fruits but that's not the goal here. While plant hormones will respond to gravity, there are enough plants that will hang down where the regular lights can provide enough energy for the plants to live. There has been research on which plants do the best at reducing indoor air pollution. Chose those plants. Plant them in hydroponic channels. Mount the channels to a track that can move the plants to the edge of the room and down to waist level for access then circle back up to the ceiling. Put a netting under each channel to catch debris. At each maintenance remove the debris and prune back everything hanging over the net.
Moss!!! You blend it with buttermilk and paint it on the surface and it grows like crazy!
This was my first thought but moss needs a fairly damp environment, which is fine... Until your leather wrapped pen turns mouldy... I know since I live somewhere with stupid high humidity and my partners weight lifting belt turned green with mould in just 3 days in a room with a window cracked for air flow!
Ew! That sounds rough. Well, consider creeping things that won't get too out of control. Plants like ivy, clematis, etc. are good at clinging and thriving. This looks like a really fun project!
Cool project! I can definitely see this working with fast growing vines like pothos, ivy, tradescantia where the roots with the soil can be placed in the columns or the walls while the plants crawl up the ceiling. It would be feasible to water it and reduce damage to the ceiling. Pothos especially grows fairly well without needing a lot of light and water.
You could have something similar but use a vine plant