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Environment & Landscape interview. CEO Park Chang-il said, 'Building maintenance guidelines that integrate environmental education across 80 Innisfree stores and school spaces is the reason for the strong response.' Garden Block, IoT, and QR-based manuals are central.
[Environment & Landscape — reporter Lee Hyeong-ju, Oct 5, 2021]
As the 'Green Smart Future School' project for school-space innovation accelerates, Changjowon's wall greening system — which boosts management efficiency by also providing maintenance guidelines that integrate environmental education — is winning a strong response in school spaces.
The wall greening market is booming. Government bodies such as the Korea Forest Service and the Rural Development Administration are expanding research and budgets, while listed companies are also entering the market by adapting their own specialized technologies. Experts explain that this trend reflects the global recognition of greening buildings like forests, and the growing acceptance that greening of leftover spaces — rooftops, terraces, balconies, walls — is one efficient strategy for the climate-change era.
According to experts, while wall greening alone may not produce dramatic effects, it can create synergies as part of multifaceted efforts in the climate-change era. Coloring the indoor and outdoor surfaces of the buildings where people spend the most time green allows users to experience environmental benefits up close along with psychological benefits — yielding high efficiency relative to cost.
From that perspective, the introduction of wall greening is increasing in school spaces. With environmental education becoming mandatory and the need for ecological-space creation rising, this trend reflects the willingness to first cultivate ecological sensitivity through wall greening that students and faculty can easily access.
CEO Park Chang-il of Changjowon said, "Through over a decade of wall greening at Innisfree stores nationwide, we have built brand image across many spaces while accumulating experience in tailoring wall greening to each region's environmental characteristics. I believe building maintenance guidelines that integrate environmental education is the reason we earn such positive responses in schools."
A Construction Method Anyone Can Manage Easily
In this way, Changjowon's wall greening system focuses on providing construction methods anyone can maintain easily. The company differentiates itself by also delivering training on environmental understanding and maintenance after installation. Notable features include regular maintenance guidelines and instructional videos accessible via QR code that explain on-the-spot care.
After the training, users can perform basic maintenance using the guidelines provided. When needed, the plant management team performs monthly services that include checking plant die-off, pest inspection, removal of yellow leaves and dead branches, pruning and weeding, chemical applications, water-supply verification, and system inspections.
Major Construction Records
Changjowon has installed indoor and outdoor wall greening at 80 Innisfree stores nationwide, including the Myeongdong flagship, Sadang branch, and Myeongdong Branch 3. As a cosmetics brand made from natural plants, Innisfree's identity is anchored in the image of signs and interior walls filled with greenery.
Drawing on this experience, Changjowon has carried out indoor wall greening at school spaces including Mungyo Elementary, Donggwang Elementary, Umyeon Elementary, Changsin Elementary, Dongil Girls' High School, Dongil Girls' Commercial High, and Seoul National University Pyeongchang Campus, and has also performed numerous Korea Forest Service Smart Garden projects at sites such as Baekdudaegan National Arboretum, Jeonju, Pyeongchang, Sacheon, Seosan, Pohang, Hongcheon, and Jinju.
Other projects include Yeouido Park One, Seoul Botanic Garden, the new Hankook Tire HQ in Pangyo, Maison Glad Hotel Jeju, the Songdo Premium Hyundai Outlets, the Dosan Cashmere Flagship Store, the Sindorim CineQ Theater, Jangduk Korean Medicine Hospital, LG Uplus Siheung, DSD Samho, and the Dongdaemun-gu Office. Last year, Changjowon won both the Grand Prize (Minister of Environment Award) and the Popularity Award at the 11th Artificial Ground Greening Awards for its work on Daewoo E&C's Euljiro Twin Tower.
A System Built on the Design-Patented 'Garden Block'
Changjowon's wall greening system is built on 'Garden Block' — a design patent. Garden Block is an injection-molded planter developed for wall greening that makes the construction and management of indoor and outdoor green walls easier. All Garden Block injection products are made from recycled materials.
Garden Block can be installed on any kind of wall — curved walls, square straight walls, or columns — and Changjowon explains that work proceeds based on a precise planting plan after structural design review. A key advantage is its detachable individual block (POT) design, which makes replacement and management simple even from the user's perspective.
The modules incorporating it come in two types: circulating and supply-and-discharge. The circulating type uses a microorganism-based, specially developed filter to purify water supplied to the lower tank, then reuses it for irrigation. The supply-and-discharge type uses direct water for irrigation and discharges any remaining water through the drain. While the circulating type's water consumption varies somewhat depending on environment, on average about 30L is auto-supplied per 10㎡ once a week. While supply-and-discharge is convenient in many ways for installation and maintenance, its water usage is high — and given that Korea is a water-scarce country, the company is shifting to circulating systems that minimize water usage.
Growth lighting that creates an indoor light environment and an air-quality monitor (ATMO) are also integrated. The air-quality monitor measures and visualizes temperature, humidity, illuminance, water level, carbon dioxide, fine dust (2.5–10), VOCs, formaldehyde, and other air-quality and wall-greening-related information. Lighting, irrigation, and ventilation systems operate based on this data.
Interview — "Good Consumers Make a Good Environment." / CEO Park Chang-il of Changjowon
Changjowon is a wall-greening company that manages plants in nature-friendly ways for the recovery of nature and people. By integrating not only walls but also frame furniture and various other items, Changjowon supports indoor and outdoor greening services optimized for each building's character — from school spaces to commercial spaces and offices. Its purpose is to provide cleaner air by purifying at least some of the fine dust that has entered work, residential, and school spaces where children live. Changjowon also conducts research on managing plants without pesticides — controlling diseases and pests with naturally extracted ingredients and restoring damaged soil through healthy soil microorganisms.
Changjowon's Corporate Motto
The motto is "a company that saves people and saves nature." To "save nature," the company strives to exclude pesticide and chemical fertilizer use as much as possible. While the "saving people" motto is a value realized through environmental improvement, the company also pursues more direct social contribution by hiring care-leavers and providing technical training, supporting job creation and social settlement.
Differentiators of Changjowon's Wall Greening
Many players are entering the wall greening market without an understanding of the relationship with — or care methods for — the plants at its core. That is why some wall greening spaces end up as eyesores with dead plants. Changjowon stands out for starting from a landscape background and having deep plant understanding. With many years in indoor and outdoor landscaping, the company has developed know-how in plant care. Wall greening fundamentally enters artificial ground and cannot live forever. No matter how well the environment is built, neglect by creators or users turns it into an eyesore. To ensure anyone can manage easily, frames are optimized to a standard usable nationwide, and IoT integration makes it so that monitoring and equipment operation occur automatically as long as water is replenished. The focus is on creating environments similar to nature, supplemented by maintenance guidelines and environmental and management education.
How Changjowon First Took on Innisfree's Wall Greening
For plants to live, conditions beyond water supply must be met. At first, an engineer-driven company with little plant understanding tried IoT-based wall greening for Innisfree, but the system suffered leaks and poor plant growth. The signage-and-wall greening at Gangnam and Myeongdong stores became an issue, and Innisfree turned to Changjowon. Once Changjowon took over — starting from improving the planting foundation through care — survival rates improved. According to Innisfree, sales differed depending on whether stores had wall greening, which led to nationwide expansion.
Once maintenance went well, many people walked by assuming the greenery was artificial. So we adopted an "intentionally under-maintained" strategy. By selectively giving minimal care to a tiny portion within each space — almost imperceptibly — we trusted that visitors would recognize the plants as living, and that this would imprint Innisfree as a brand that thinks about nature. We were sure it would succeed.
What change will the spread of wall greening bring to society?
"Good consumers make a good environment."
When consumption is done right, right producers emerge. Only when there are many people producing the right way around us can we survive the climate crisis. Wall greening is one way to bring nature into daily life — and at the same time, a medium that conveys a message about healthy consumption. Environmental effects matter, but I believe the more important role is communicating environmental messages to space-users and nurturing ecological sensitivity. In stores like Innisfree, it makes people reconsider consumption; in school spaces, it makes us think one more time about our children's future.