A Commercial Living Wall on a Shopping Mall Escalator

The Challenge

The manager of a shopping mall in Southern California wanted to bring more plants into the building. He also wanted to make an impact and do something different. The constraint was floor space: in a mall, every square foot is valuable, and he did not want to give any of it up.

He had already identified a greenwall as the opportunity. The question was where. The escalator is the focal point of the food court, and in its existing state it was unattractive.

The Solution

We agreed with the client that the side of the escalator was the right place for a living wall. One installation answered three needs at once: it made the escalator a feature of the space, it brought a large number of plants into the mall, and it used no floor space at all, because the planting is entirely vertical.

Working with the mall's existing team

We did not ask the client to bring in a new set of contractors. We partnered with the incumbent plant maintenance company and with the general contractor that handles all other work in the mall. The living wall system is easy to use, which made that partnership straightforward, and the project fitted into the working relationships the mall already had.

The Results

The escalator went from the least attractive element of the food court to its centerpiece. The wall delivered an instant effect: it looked complete from the day it was installed, with no waiting for plants to fill in. The mall gained a large number of plants without losing any floor space. The client was delighted with the outcome, and pointed to the ease of the system and the immediate visual result as the reasons.