What) We've grown fond of sparkling water. But sparkling air - that's what students at Centennial are breathing in their new $34-million library that was designed by Diamond + Schmitt Architects. Benjaminas, ficas, ivy and rubber plants push their lush and wet leaves out of a four storey vertical wall, while a veil of water runs up and down the lush display of hydroponics. It's a backdrop rich enough to be part of a theatre. Balconies clad in beech wood and glass punch forward to hover above the atrium. Slender white pendant lights hang in front of the green wall, making an intimate, human scale.
The bio-filtering living wall is a Canadian innovation first imagined at the University of Guelph to enhance long-term habitation of space stations. That was a decade ago, when Canadian and European space agencies were funding the bio-filter research. Then, in 2001, Diamond + Schmitt heard about the system and met with Alan Darlington, a biologist and Guelph inventor of the Nedlaw living wall, to facilitate its first commercial application. Some 200 of these Nedlaw vertical walls have now been installed in North America.
"It's an entirely Canadian solution to dealing with poor indoor air quality," says Mr. Darlington. With a single pass through the system, approximately 80 per cent of the contaminants in the air, caused by construction materials, printers and computers including benzene and formaldehyde, are removed. That's because air can be efficiently cleaned and polished when microbes find easy access to plant roots in the vertical wall. Because much less air from the outside needs to be imported and filtered through a mechanical system, energy consumption is reduced and the air is naturally humidified. (From the September 10, 2011 Globe and Mail)
Where) Highway 401 and Markham Road
Why) As you may have noticed, I have a fondness for interesting architecture and
the living wall described above is something I have only ever heard of and never seen. 
Here is the library from the outside. It certainly does not look like a building that contains something cutting edge.
