Victoria Way Car Park

Project Background

As part of the huge regeneration project in Woking, the Victoria Square development involved this multi-storey car park, which is where we got involved. Led by Sir Robert McAlpine, this transformation is a joint venture between Woking Borough Council and shopping centre owner and investor, Moyallen Group. Our work at Dukes Court was also part of the larger regeneration project, which is complete and can be viewed here. We worked alongside Maple Sunscreening who delivered their rainscreen cladding system.

Featured Solutions

• Viritopia Living Wall System (Exterior)
• Viritopia Green Roofs

• Size: 1,700m²

Three key areas

Woking Borough Council earmarked 3 key locations to create a greener and cleaner town centre using the power of nature: Victoria Square, Dukes Court and Middle Walk. Victoria Square was identified as a key location, to emphasise what can be done using natural systems, and plays an integral role in Woking’s transformation.

More specifically, our work was focused on Victoria Way Car Park, the 50,000 square foot multi-storey next to the new Hilton Hotel.

Dual-purpose design

The living walls on the façade had a dual-purpose: support local biodiversity and improve air quality. This was the design teams focus as they created plant lists for every elevation, ensuring the plants could survive in each area, whether it was in full sun, part shade-part sun, or full shade, and fulfil the purpose of the project.

Building for biodiversity gain

For the living wall to support biodiversity, we focused on including native species (plants that are found and grow in the local area). This means that the plants are natural to the area and are specially adapted to the ecosystem. Native plants are intrinsic to the preservation of a diverse and healthy ecosystem.

The soil

The second, and perhaps more important point is that all the plants across the green wall are grown in natural soil. This means that they are in their natural habitat and can withstand adverse conditions if necessary.

Biodiversity gain

For biodiversity the benefits are greater still, as soil provides for burrowing insects and solitary bees, which live in soil rather than a beehive. Solitary bees make their home in soil, so having a soil-based living wall system is important if you’re building for biodiversity.

Designing for air quality

In order to design a living wall for improved air quality, we had to focus on selecting plants with significant air purification benefits. These can often be identified as plants with small hairs on the stems of leaves, plants that absorb mould spores, have woodier stems, and leaves with larger surface areas.

Installation

Over the course of a year nearly all the install and operations team visited or worked on site to ensure completion to a high standard (this time includes the green roofs as well as living walls). Pictured are two of our installation team, Francisco and Leilah!

Environmental gain

The area now benefits from a range of colourful vegetation to improve aesthetics, enhanced air quality by trapping pollutants, as well as an overall flourish in nature and wildlife. In figures, the recent work completed by Viritopia on Victoria Way is responsible for extracting approximately 2,600kg of carbon, whilst producing 3,400kg of oxygen per year.

...and that's not all!

In further support of Woking Borough Council’s sustainability goals, our work on Victoria Way’s car park also involved an intensive and extensive green roof, totalling 4,200m². Check out the case study here.

14 months later...

And here is Victoria Way Car Park just over a year later! Our maintenance team have done a great job keeping this project looking very healthy.