Cooling Performance of Green Walls Under Diverse Conditions in the Urban Zone of Lower Silesia

Environmental awareness and sustainable development in the context of energy secu-rity, including reduced energy consumption, increasingly require the introduction of innovative solutions in urban areas. These will primarily be systems based on natural architecture, particularly green facades and green roofs. In the near future, they will undoubtedly constitute an integral element of most architectural solutions and are al-ready a standard within global development strategies. Society faces the priority of achieving carbon neutrality, reducing the consumption of natural resources, and minimising the carbon footprint. This paper analyses the temperature around the canopy and the rear surfaces of two experimental models of green facades located on the campus of the University of Life Sciences in the centre of Wroclaw and at the Re-search and Educational Station of the same institution located in the suburban area of Swojec, southern Poland. In both cases, the locations can be classified within the same region, a transitional temperate climate zone. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the thermal effect of two locations with different characteristics, determined in the first case by dense urban development, and in the second by open and sparsely devel-oped areas. Analysis of average temperature reductions for warm and sunny days re-vealed a significant cooling effect. This effect was observed for green surfaces, regard-less of the location and display of the model. For the variant at a distance of 5 cm from the plants, a higher data concentration and a lower variability were recorded. In the same group, on sunny days, the cooling effect, depending on the location, was 4-7° C. On cloudy days, average maximum cooling in this group did not exceed 4° C. It should be emphasised that future research should focus on other elements of these systems, employ a multidisciplinary approach, and additionally have a significant impact on the urban microclimate and the immediate surroundings of the facades.