Veggie Waffles Anyone?

Ok... it actually sounds pretty gross but the core concept is to take the idea of a concrete waffle panel(most commonly used in long-span floors), and adapt it for use as a vegetated building cladding or fence panel insert. I chose the waffle panel typology for several reasons
1. Its an economical use of materials
2. It is a recognized construction material & method...therefore this idea could easily be standardized for large-scale fabrication or repeated at home(or so I hypothesized.)
3. It could be adapted for use in fence inserts that a shopper at Lowe's might love or as a building cladding that would create a beautiful vegetated patchwork on the exterior and perhaps improve the thermal performance of wall enclosures in some climates.
4. The underlying grid of a waffle panel has a nice pattern that I felt would contrast well with the organic and somewhat unpredictable nature of growing plants.
5. Everybody loves a waffle.

So take a reinforced concrete waffle panel and insert into the cells pre-planted gabion "plant pockets" as I like to call them. Continuing with the tasty analogy...this is the syrup. The idea with this being that the pockets could be planted based on location(yea native plants!) or by color or texture to create another layer of pattern in the system.

I was definitely influenced by the gabion wall project from last year (http://horticulturalbuildingsystems.blogspot.com/2010/09/soil-filled-gabion.html) and really wanted to explore ideas of modularity and standardized fabrication.

Process sketches below.