A striking 12-storey office block being built in Salford, which will a living, breathing façade, will be named ‘Eden’.

The £36m 115,000 sq ft development will feature Europe’s biggest living wall - a stunning array of plants, insect hotels and bird nesting boxes. It is the latest office building being delivered in Salford by the ECF development partnership, and forms part of the wider £1bn Salford Central masterplan.

Phil Marsden, project director at Muse Developments, said: “We've accumulated a huge amount of knowledge over the past 18 months of how to extract the maximum from technology and resources for sustainability purposes.

"Eden is designed to be net zero carbon in operation, achieving the UKGBC interim energy intensity targets for operational energy - and this is where we believe Eden will have another advantage: some building projects in design stages which have suddenly changed focus to become more carbon-efficient have struggled to find the resource to go carbon-efficient in both constructing and operating those buildings. It’s vital that these requirements are embedded into the brief from the very start. 

"We have also thought hard about increasing biodiversity, and we have Europe's biggest living wall - with the overwhelming majority of the non-glazed elements of the façade to be covered by 350,000 plants. The living wall provides real environmental benefits by removing toxins from the atmosphere, creating a significant increase in bio-diversity, providing habitat for birds, butterflies and pollinators, and also improves the thermal performance of the building.”

The ambitious flagship development is being developed by The English Cities Fund, a joint venture between urban regenerator Muse Developments, Legal & General and Homes England and is set for completion in 2023.