In 2018, the WHO designated air quality as the top public health concern globally, a pervasive challenge that transcends geographic and demographic sectors. Within cities, urbanization has led to a multitude of environmental and systemic factors that degrade both indoor and outdoor air quality, thereby adversely impacting building energy use, and human health and wellbeing. In addition to toxic pollutants from multiple sources the impact of urban development patterns on biodiversity and and potential effects on human health and wellbeing, is rapidly emerging as an area of scientific interest.

The compromised air we breathe is both a product of our reliance on combustion technologies for almost everything we do and make, as well as as reflecting the inability of most contemporary societies to live in concert with the natural rhythms of their surrounding ecosystems. Strategies for integrating large scale plant-based air handling systems into buildings are showing early promise to address air quality and related energy use and may be able to address identified challenges in built environment microbiome while offering a range of other environmental, material life cycle and energy benefits associated with an increase in urban vegetation.

However, the complexity of interactions between living systems and environmental control systems is such that there remain substantial gaps in the knowledge, thus continuing to impede both the value characterization and implementation of these systems.