An Innovative Nature-Based Building Tile for Climate Mitigation and Adaptation: The Life Capt-Tile Project

Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), such as green roofs and green walls, offer sustainable strategies to mitigate Climate Change and to address additional challenges associated with urbanization, such as air pollution, biodiversity loss, noise, and decreased ability to retain rainwater. Despite their widely recognized benefits, usually defined as ecosystem services, their adoption remains limited due to high costs, complex installation processes, and maintenance requirements. This work presents the EU-funded LIFE CAPT-TILE project, which introduces an innovative and modular tile solution to overcome these constraints by developing a lightweight terracotta-based tile named “CAPT-TILE” to be integrated with soil layers to support vegetation growth on facades and on pitched and flat roofs. The project follows a multi-phase methodology, including laboratory trials, operational testing through the realization of two mock-ups, and practical in situ demonstration of CAPT-TILEs’ performance. This includes their installation on roofs and a green façade on two buildings located in Italy and Poland. The project aims to demonstrate the environmental and socio-economic benefits of CAPT-TILEs, including GHG sequestration (i.e., each m2 of CAPT-TILE surface has the potential to absorb 1.1–1.8 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere and store it as plant biomass), biodiversity promotion, and mitigation of noise and temperature. Furthermore, market validation and sustainability assessments, conducted through Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing, will support the CAPT-TILE technologies’ commercialization and facilitate their widespread adoption. The LIFE CAPT-TILE project represents a significant effort toward democratizing urban greening systems by bridging the gap between environmental goals and socioeconomic constraints.