Environmental Design Commons^™

A Deep Dive Into Natural Swimming Pool Filtration: Living Walls As Technical Wetland Filters, Anna Farb

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Vertical gardens such as living walls can filter air and water, in addition to cooling buildings, reducing noise, increasing urban biodiversity, providing food, and enhancing well-being. Natural swimming pools (NSPs) are an ecologically sound alternative to chemically treated pools, but they have not reached their potential in the U.S. We investigated whether a living wall could be integrated into an NSP system for water filtration purposes, given that the vertical filter would have to produce excellent water quality for human swimmers. This could be a novel landscape design, particularly in the cases of steep contours, urbanized sites with limited space, …