Green façades, FLAMES University

FLAMES University in Pune has a series of student housing buildings, each with an open staircase on its façade. The university wanted to screen the stairs and bring planting onto the buildings at the same time. The answer is a band of green over each staircase, about 4.6 m wide and 12 to 15 m high. Acier designs, supplies and installs the system, and has added it to 12 buildings since 2021, each one as it is completed.

The bands only work if they read as clean, straight strips of green. Each one has to be set out accurately and hold its alignment over the full height of the building while the plants fill in, and the work has to be done safely at height while students live in the buildings around it. The mesh also screens a stair that people use every day, so it has to be secure and tidy at every edge. Pune's heavy monsoon and dry summer mean the planting needs water through the year.

Each band is a single panel of Jakob Webnet in Ø2 mm stainless rope with a 200 mm mesh width, running from top to bottom without joints. The mesh is carried on a framework of Jakob Ø6 mm ropes, with clevis ends and turnbuckles to set the tension, fixed to the structure on SS 316 brackets that Acier designed and had made for these buildings.

The climbers grow from ground beds at the foot of each band, which gives them more soil and water than planters at height. The 200 mm mesh is open enough for the plants to weave through quickly and close enough to hold them at every point. Each band takes one to two months on site, and the detail repeats from building to building, so every new block matches the last.

The bands are covered in about nine months. The staircases are screened, the buildings read as green from across the campus, and students see the façades change with the seasons. With 12 buildings done so far, the same detail is used on each new block as it is built.