The NBC Experience Store at Rockefeller Center project was developed as a piece for NBC’s “Green is Universal” week 2010, resulting in a beautiful and lush indoor wall in the heart of New York City. A secondary green initiative included a temporary window display to educate the public on green farming with vertical living walls as well as show the portability of the Green Living Technologies International (GLTi) Mobile Edible Wall Unit (MEWU), used as a teaching tool in classrooms and as part of the GLTi Food Factory.

The project received a lot of attention upon the introduction of the installation team. The GLTi certified installers were not only from the Bronx, they were also GLTi’s youngest certified installers in the world. As part of the GLTi educational curriculum, this Discovery High School team of interns is part of the degree track program getting paid to implement the skills they learned in the classroom. These students are now sought after by some of the larger GLTi installers as green roof and wall installers and maintenance technicians.

NBC’s “Green is Universal” program incorporates the following educational signage adjacent to their permanent living wall on the second floor of their NBC Experience Store:

“Fresh Air. Brought to You By This Wall. Living walls aren’t just pretty – they naturally cool and filter air, lowering the amount of energy a building needs. Learn more about this wall, and other efforts at greenisuniversal.com.”

The interior greenwall utilizes the patented 24″x24″x4″ Green Living Wall Panels consisting of low light indoor plants. The additional lighting includes the GLTi LED Full Spectrum grow lights that use only 7W of electricity and the bulbs last over 50,000 hours, making the lighting unit a great low cost option. The window display consists of 4 MEWUs. The wall units are included in the GLTi curriculum used in the NYC Schools and will be part of the new Hunts Point High School for Sustainable Community Initiatives in the Bronx, making the program the first of its kind providing a degree track with green technologies as the focal point. The unit is bell to bell instruction and can be used to grow everything from food to long-lived perennials.