Infrastructure Malta has launched legal proceedings against a private contractor for failing to maintain the green wall along the Marsa-Ħamrun Bypass, a €480,000 project that was once hailed as an innovative approach to urban greening and air quality improvement.
The government agency announced on Thursday evening via social media that the contractor, identified as The Doric Studio, had “failed to meet his maintenance obligations under the five-year agreement, leading to the wall’s degradation.” The legal action aims to compel the contractor to carry out the necessary upkeep at their own expense, as stipulated in the original agreement.
Inaugurated in late 2020, the bypass green wall was a flagship project spanning 350 metres—”longer than the length of three football grounds,” according to Infrastructure Malta’s press release at the time.
The wall boasted over 27,000 plants and was equipped with an auto-irrigation system connected to a nearby reservoir. CCTV cameras were also installed to prevent theft and vandalism.
At its launch, then-infrastructure minister Ian Borg promoted the project as a means to enhance air quality and improve the area’s aesthetics. The Doric Studio, an architectural and civil engineering firm, was awarded the contract worth nearly €480,000 to install and maintain the green wall for five years.
Recent observations have revealed the wall to be in a state of neglect, with plants appearing brown, dying, and overgrown.
The Doric Studio’s website appears to have a section dedicated to ‘living walls’, featuring an image of the bypass project, the link was non-functional at the time of this report. Additionally, a Facebook page for Living Walls, described on LinkedIn as a “landscape branch”, has not been updated since August 2022.
This is not an isolated incident of green wall projects facing difficulties in Malta. Last year, a €30,000 green wall near the prisons in Paola had to be removed after the plants died less than three years post-installation. In 2021, images of withered plants on a green wall bordering Luqa sparked widespread criticism on social media, with one post deriding it as a “pure waste of public funds”.
