Today we’d like to introduce you to Irina Kim Sang. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Whether you are an architect, an engineer, an interior designer, an owner of a luxury property or just a passerby, and you have seen some green walls, in person or from images, perhaps from books, internet or architect’s renderings, you may ask yourself: Is it real? How is it made? What makes it a success?
In July 2013, Irina Kim Sang and business partner Victor Franco, with over 18-year experience, launched Miami Vertical Garden Inc. a Miami-based company specializing in the design, installation, and maintenance of indoor and outdoor, fully transferrable, clean, hydroponic, panel-based living walls with built-in irrigation systems. They provide their product and services to a variety of hotels, restaurants, retail, educational, hospital, mixed use, public, and commercial communities as well as custom residential indoor and outdoor projects. The brand is tailored to each client’s need and offers the most advanced, environmentally friendly, and sustainable green features. The benefits of Living Walls include:
• Reduce urban heat island effect
• Enhance building authentic function
• Air cleaning
• Increase building thermal performance
• Noise insulation
• Protect building façade
• Increase property value
• Enhance human health and well being
Living Walls are a trend now and for the future based on sophisticated technology. Vertical greenery is a delicate balance of form and function, pragmatism and imagination, nature and technology, biology and chemistry, precision and free-growth. Miami Vertical Garden Inc. is dealing with living organisms and that means that a successful living wall requires four key elements: the growing medium, monitored and automated unique invisible irrigation with precision and remote monitoring, appropriate plant selection for specific kinds of exposure, and proper maintenance.
Designers of green walls can work at a great range of scales, from the creation of small private space interactions like intimate garden settings to the monumental scale of a multistory project. Specific benefits can include security, privacy screening, shade, biodiversity, habitat and even urban agriculture. These design-specific benefits are not mutually exclusive.
As a team, Irina and Victor are passionate about the combination of art and technology which evolves naturally over time. Their mission is to design, install and maintain living art projects that inspire. They believe that “Creativity is Intelligence Having Fun” and “We could not have imagined a better place than Miami to implement our mission.” – Irina Kim Sang and Victor Franco, Founders of Miami Vertical Garden Inc.
Enthusiastically, The Founders of Miami Vertical Garden Inc.
MORE FACTS: Why Miami Vertical Garden Inc.
Why Miami Vertical Garden Inc.?
Follow Us: @miamiverticalgarden miamiverticalgarden.com
1. MVG sets the direction and guidance for the architects, interior designers, landscape architects, general contractors and general public in the relatively new for Miami industry of the green living walls through free education and training including regular annual AIA course “Vertical Green Living Walls: Designing for Sustainability”.
2. MVG stays ahead of the industry through strategic collaborations with partners in Barcelona, Spain, California, USA and Netherlands on irrigation-with-precision trends, remote monitoring, self-regulating irrigation and hydroponic growing medium technology.
3. MVG has engaged as the experimental grounds in the Agroecology research: “Effects of light intensity and quality on most common indoor plants in Vertical Gardening” at the Florida International University.
4. MVG has shared expertise and best practices as part of Interior Design Program at the University of Miami “Interior Vertical Gardens: Creating ambience, enhancing customer experience and branding”.
5. MVG continuously sets very high standards and expectations from vertical garden long-term performance through
the turn-key all in-house operations during design and installation stages of the process and under reliable maintenance procedures including remote monitoring technology.
6. For MVG sustainability is the key criteria and we are the only company in Miami which has the live proof – the first living wall, installed in December 2013 in private residence on Key Biscayne, 288 SF still has 95% of the originally planted species.
7. MVG continuously shares free practical insider’s knowledge on how to make living walls a success.
8. MVG priorities sustainability, creative design and superior customer service, through which MVG sets high standards for the industry in general.
9. Irina Kim Sang, one of the MVG founders is the scholar of the inaugural year of the CKLDP Program.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It was a really smooth ride in the overall perception of where we are now and how we got here.
Especially great “moments / aspects”:
– Business partnership: two partners with complementary skills, a non-competitive environment with each other, we are learning from each other and growing together instead.
– Perfect timing: being the first to the game in the territory.
– Being at the right place, at the right time: growing the business in the construction market on the rise, high demand for luxury products and services.
– Professional marketing background of one of the founding partners: Clarity in vision, positioning, message, and strong branding.
– Expert knowledge of one of the founding partners: Practical solutions, action, and execution with zero failure.
– Lean finances: smart and controlled cost and minimum overhead expenses.
– Very creative yet sustainable design of all our green installations (more than 152) satisfying the needs of the most demanding luxury clients.
– Very high standards in quality control and customer service.
I could list more, these are the most important factors which we believe lead to success.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We would like our Miami Vertical Garden BRAND to be perceived as we are the Artists, we create unique sustainable vertical gardens. Each work is custom and meets individual styles. The result of our work is not a truck from the assembly line but Rolls-Royce in our industry.
We care about each of our vertical gardens and our oldest (Project 1) installed in December 2013 is stunning and still has original plants.
How do you define success?
Success is doing what you like. For the money that affords your preferred lifestyle.
For the people you like, with the people you love.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@miamiverticalgarden.com
- Website: Miamiverticalgarden.com
- Instagram: @miamiverticalgarden
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/miamiverticalgarden/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoEGfmRoQobCytO42fgxMeg/videos
- Other: https://www.houzz.com/pro/miamiverticalgardens/miami-vertical-garden-inc
