LIVING ARCHITECTURE THE EFFICACY OF ACTIVE GREEN WALLS IN FILTERING URBAN INDOOR POLLUTANTS

Urban living keeps getting more crowded, and as cities cram people into sealed-up high-rises, indoor air quality just keeps dropping. Most new apartments work like airtight boxes—great for cutting AC bills, but terrible for anything you breathe. It traps carbon dioxide and a soup of nasty chemicals from furniture, paints, and finishes. HEPA purifiers? They’re everywhere, but they eat up energy, and honestly, those potted plants in the corner aren’t pulling their weight. This paper looks at Active Green Walls—setups that use hydroponics and bio-filtration, tying straight into the building’s ventilation. By pushing dirty air through the root zones of specific plants, these systems let natural microbes break down toxins, cutting VOC levels and trimming energy use for folks packed into the city.