A couple years ago, Coalesse created a huge moss wall in their NeoCon showroom, then located on the 10th floor. People were drawn to the wall’s intense, textural, monochromatic feel. Coalesse designers created the wall themselves, stuffing moss into chicken wire, and as many NeoCon-ers can imagine, showroom visitors didn’t hesitate to reach out and touch the moss, even grabbing some off the wall and keeping it as a show memento of sorts.
This past June at NeoCon 2018, many showrooms featured more explicit applications of biophilic design, with no shortage of real plant life shown in the workplace setting. Moss made a big appearance – and in many forms, with varying textures, colors and maintenance levels.
Fully formed living walls are now entering the contract marketplace – not simply as part of the showroom experience, but as a product offering customers can buy directly from furniture manufacturers.
Leading up to its 2018 NeoCon show, Coalesse announced its new partnership with Sagegreenlife, a leader in the design and manufacture of interior and exterior living green walls. With this announcement, Coalesse is signaling its intent to dig deep into biophilic design, offering its customers more extensive options.
Moss and more comprehensive living wall offerings are two distinctly different product categories. Moss is low-cost, low-maintenance, and can be treated with eye-catching color options; visually and texturally, it offers many design varieties/opportunities. The more moss is preserved and treated, the less beneficial its biophilic abilities are; for example, moss does not purify the air the way a living wall does.
“With a living wall, you’re saying, ‘I’m getting involved in a living design – something that can change and evolve and that requires care,” said Lew Epstein, Coalesse general manager, in an officeinsight interview. “There’s a lot of variety and many more sustainable qualities in a living wall.”
Coalesse now carries Sagegreenlife’s Verdanta collection, a line of self-contained, free-standing living walls and moveable partitions. Designed in collaboration with Gensler’s product design team, Verdanta includes three solutions: Flourish is a living wall attached directly to the wall by a simple hanger, from two feet wide to 20 feet or more, and can include up to 150-200 plants in one partition. Duet is a standalone living wall with plant life on both sides, that can easily be moved around. Productivity is a standalone living wall in a similar form to Duet, but with plant life on one side and chalkboard on the other.
All of the pieces in the Verdanta Collection are all-inclusive, so that when you specify them, everything you need is designed into each standalone piece. Each piece includes a built-in water tank that sustains the living wall for two full weeks – the standard amount of time Sagegreenlife living walls spend in-between service visits.
When we select a partner, we don’t ask, ‘Who has the goods I’m looking for?’ but, ‘Who has the goods I’m looking for and is like-minded.’ That’s the starting point. Sagegreenlife is really well-aligned with how we at Coalesse think about created and developing spaces.”
Sagegreenlife’s patented Biotile, is the company’s form of growing medium that holds plants within a living wall. While other companies use solutions like trellises, trays or wool/felt pockets, the Biotile is a nearly soil-less system, making it super water-efficient – a sturdy sponge that brings water beyond the surface into the irrigation system.
“Rockwool has been used horizontally in horticulture for years, and it requires very little water,” said Harry Eschel, VP of Products at Sagegreenlife, in an officeinsight interview. “We found a way to turn it on its side and create a vertical panel that evenly distributes the water and nourishment. That even distribution translates to longer plant life.”
Sagegreenlife points to a number of competitive advantages to its system, compared to other living walls that use felt, tray/soil, or trellis-based systems. It reports having a 10X more water-efficient irrigation system, and it requires fewer maintenance visits. The Biotile is a non-deteriorating growth medium that contains a 100% recyclable Rockwool base and does not decay. The system has a more efficient nutrient delivery system, and Sagegreenlife living walls also report a 95% plant survivability rate.
“Sagegreenlife self-irrigation technology distributes the perfect amount of water to circulate evenly throughout a custom green wall,” reads the Sagegreenlife website.
In addition to the well-documented psychological benefits of biophilic living walls in the workplace, Sagegreenlife highlights its living walls’ ability to mitigate urban heat islands, offer air purification, sound reduction, thermal insulation and pest reduction qualities.
Sagegreenlife also guarantees versatility in climate zones, increased exterior winter survivability, proven interior longevity, and more flexibility to customers through the modularity of its solutions.
“Sagegreenlife’s Verdanta collection, as opposed to a trellis-based system, is really well-positioned for our market,” Mr. Epstein noted. “The nutrient delivery and irrigation systems ensure a high level of water efficiency and other sustainable qualities, which are really important to our customer. And the botanical side of the solution – the selection of the plants and the horticulture expertise – is very well-thought-out.”
Every two weeks, a service provider will come in to care for the living wall – refilling the water reservoir, check out the health and wellbeing of the plants, and rehab and replace any areas that need attention. In its home market of Chicago, Sagegreenlife acts as the primary service provider for all of its living walls. Outside of the Chicagoland area, Sagegreenlife works with subcontractors to offer contract of care services to its customers.
“The service component, and how easy it is to be able to coordinate it for our customers was really important to us,” said Mr. Epstein.
Coalesse rolled out a pilot program to test the market and figure out what the normal buying cycle for the living wall industry looked like, setting a goal to develop the option with six dealers within the first six months. Around the time of NeoCon, the pilot program had just past the six-month mark and had surpassed its goal. Now, ten months into the program, Coalesse is opening it up to more and more dealers.
“After NeoCon, the pull from dealers was tremendous,” said Mr. Epstein. “Dealers were coming to us with clients ready to do business. They simply didn’t have the resource in place to get to living walls before, so there was a big opportunity there for us.”
At Sagegreenlife, the future is bright.
“We’re still a young company, and the partnership with Coalesse opens up a tremendous distribution channel for us,” said Mr. Eschel. “Being associated with the Coalesse and Steelcase brands brings validation to what we’re doing. We’re excited to have the opportunity and to be involved.”