The Biofaçade as a Vertical Edible Landscape in High-Rise Buildings: A Review

This paper reviews the potential of the biofaçade as one of the Vertical Greenery Systems (VGS) for addressing issues of food security in the urban context. The emergence of the biofaçade has led many scholars to conduct numerous studies on the benefits of greeneries integrated with the structure of the residential or office building. Besides reducing the temperature, a biofaçade can be optimized as a ‘Vertical Edible Landscape’. The scarcity of landed green space in the urban environment serves to spur experts to initiate cultivation of edible plants on high-rise buildings. Transitional or buffer space is a space with lower economic value. Regardless of that fact, the presence of transitional space is important and can be optimized as a green space. The review concludes there are many factors entailed that need to be examined in growing edible plants on high-rise buildings. Those factors comprise plant type, the prevailing climatic conditions on the high-rise building, maintenance, and pest control issues. Findings indicate that by growing an edible biofaçade on high-rise buildings, this could increase vegetable consumption, lower emission from fossil fuel used for transport of food, minimize the pesticides used, and will reduce local expenditures on fruits and vegetables.