Green Walls in Jakob Saigon Factory | Jakob

Green Solutions from Jakob Ropes System are adaptable for various greening projects, here they were used to create green walls for the facade of Jakob's own sustainable factory. This manufacturing plant and showroom is a highly innovative and high-functioning space and an icon for similar sustainable, tropical, industrial architecture. The three-building, multi-story structure is clustered around a landscaped inner courtyard covering a 30,000m² tropical site in Saigon, Vietnam.

Sustainability Objectives

Together with Peter Jakob, the design team worked around ambitious sustainability goals: to mitigate the environmental impacts of the tropical climate, to responsibly manage site rainfall as far as possible, to minimize energy consumption for cooling and ventilation throughout and to include indigenous, vernacular strategies in the search for passive and sustainable solutions to economies of energy, site water management, and natural ventilation.

Hanging Gardens

To complement the suite of green infrastructure strategies products from Jakob Ropes System such as Webnet©, stainless steel frames, and wire ropes were chosen to create “hanging gardens”, a hybrid membrane/trellis of indigenous plants in container frames, supported by cables, designed and installed as modular parts. The planter frames that support the green wall vegetation extend the entire length of the building’s facades. Over six kilometers of diagonally running wire ropes support up to nine levels of planters.

The plants are bedded in fabric mats fitted to the structures supporting them, and are automatically irrigated and fertilized. This hybrid support system of stainless steel cable and Webnet© represents a unique matrix and is the reason that the Jakob Rope Systems factory stands out as an icon for tropical sustainable buildings.