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Project Background

Eden at New Bailey, aka A3 Salford located in Salford, Manchester is Europe's largest living wall. We are extremely proud to have been such an important player of this project. The living wall wrapped on all elevations across the façade was designed, supplied and installed by Viritopia.

Size:

  • 3,900sqm

Project Drivers:

  • Biodiversity
  • Urban Greening Factor (UGF)

More about the project

This new build project had an aim from the start – working in line with the UK Green Building Council Net Zero Carbon Framework to become the most eco-friendly building as they can, and they succeeded. This was achieved, with soil-based modular living walls all across the elevation and by using recycled or sustainable material for internal spaces too. To know more on how they achieved this, check out this link... https://www.new-bailey.com/eden/

We designed and developed the project with Make Architects, who had an amazing vision of a wrapped-in-green building. (project architect Rahul Vishwakarma says: "We're excited to see Eden's green wall coming to life in Salford. The pioneering building is pushing boundaries and making a statement in the New Bailey masterplan, boosting biodiversity and creating a sustainable and vibrant place to work." 

Environmental Credentials

  • UKGBC Net Zero carbon in operation
  • WELL Building Standard
  • BREEAM Outstanding
  • LETI pioneer project
  • NABER rating – 5.5 star

What it's made of...

The living wall is designed with modular plants with an ivy veil with a mix of trailing and climbing plants, almost acting as a camouflage to the building as a whole. The species of ivy has been carefully selected for its hardiness and seasonal appearance. This living wall will absorb and filter the pollution and carbon in the atmosphere, enhance biodiversity, attenuate rainwater, reduce noise and provide biophilic benefits for the health and wellbeing of the users.

Did we mention – this 3,900m2 green façade has a 20,000 litre self-sufficient rainwater harvesting tank, helps control the urban heat island, and took around 10 months to install. Eden is also increasing the BNG by 174% with this project, with over 16 tonnes of soil and 33 different plant species and 350,000 plants in total helping it along the way.

More to come

Indeed one of our flagship projects, and we are extremely proud of the entire team at Viritopia who achieved this project with great success. Can we wait to see more of these projects, not really so let's design more, better and bigger.

If you haven't had a tour around this iconic project, please book today - link here... /learn/events/tours