Toward Adaptable and Industrialized Vertical Greenery Systems: A Critical Review and Future Developments

Among nature-based solutions, Vertical Greenery Systems (VGS) are widely recognized as effective solutions for improving the environmental performance of buildings and urban areas. Although their benefits have been extensively studied and demonstrated, their large-scale implementation remains limited. This paper explores the hypothesis that the main barriers to the widespread adoption of VGS—and especially Green Facades (GF)—are not related to their environmental performance but rather to their lack of industrialization and to purely technological and construction-related aspects concerning support and anchoring systems. Following an in-depth review of the scientific literature published since 2006, the study found that most publications focus primarily on the environmental performance of green roofs, while the structural and technological aspects, as well as the potential for adaptation to existing buildings, remain largely unexplored areas. This is also reflected in construction practice, highlighting how most existing solutions are based on specific, case-by-case design approaches, limiting replicability and large-scale implementation, especially in existing buildings. The paper identifies the concept of construction adaptability as a potential direction for innovative research aimed at developing industrialized systems that are replicable and adaptable even to existing buildings, thereby promoting the large-scale use of GF.