Project Day: Combating urban heat with urban greenery: green facades

Project Day

Cities contribute to climate change and are also particularly affected by its consequences, such as air pollution, extreme weather and increasing heat waves. Urban greenery, especially green facades, can help reduce the heat island effect and improve the urban climate.

At various stations, pupils learn about different greening systems and climbing plants and use sensors to investigate key plant characteristics such as CO₂ absorption, photosynthesis, shading, transpiration and evaporative cooling. They can also build their own models for façade greening with the help of digital instructions.

Introduction

The student project day addresses the topic of the thermal potential of green facades and shows how research findings from scientific and didactic practice can be successfully transferred to schools in order to teach education for sustainable development (ESD) as a cross-curricular topic.

The aim is to show pupils the effects of climate change on urban areas and their inhabitants, as well as to convey the positive effects and thus the potential of urban greenery using the example of green facades as a climate change adaptation measure. Furthermore, an important goal of the student project day is to strengthen skills in dealing with data and facts, in addition to purely scientific knowledge of phenomena, by means of the students’ own data collection: The problem is investigated independently by the students in a guided research process (research-based learning).

The focus will be on experiments in which the pupils themselves use sensors to investigate the properties of plants (e.g. effects of temperature, humidity, CO₂, etc.). Experiments on greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, photosynthesis, shading effect, transpiration & evaporative cooling.

There is also the option of building your own façade greening models with the help of detailed digital instructions.