the green wall project 

The Green Wall project is an innovative solution to interpreting plants as indoor biosensors. Guided through the research of Professor Rana Abu Dayyeh, interior spaces are envisioned to act as biophilic designs. Where a Phytosensor wall is established adjacent to installed features such as heating and ventilation that concentrate gases, engineered houseplants can be used to sense and report indoor conditions.

The development of this project was extended to refugee camps such as the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. According to the UNHCR's policy on camps "the arrangement of refugee accommodation and assistance comes with a degree of limitation on their rights and freedoms such as their ability to move freely, choose where to live, work or open a business, cultivate land or access protection and services." With the accumulation of shelters such as the IKEA UNHCR Better Shelters, a dynamic landscape is formed with the introduction of the "Living Walls". The shelters of the refugee sites would have the walls installed onto or inside the refugee housing units to aid the displacement by allowing the occupants to grow their own food, plants, and livelihood. The "Living Walls" can double up as benches or desks, and as the initial purpose of detecting hazardous gases in indoor conditions. The accumulation of the walls in a refugee camp pose as an effort towards creating resilient futures as bringing back nature will make the make-shift city a "Living City".