Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall

Yahoo! is committed to being an environmentally responsible company, and the addition of a G-O2® Living Wall is just one leafy example. With the Internet accessible by over 40% of the world’s population, such a demand for Internet services requires expanded infrastructure and installation of more computing and data storage capability with low power consumption.

Completed in 2015, Yahoo!’s newest data center, a 155,000 square foot facility in Lockport, NY, uses 40% less energy and 95% less water than conventional facilities. The air-cooled data center, which can accommodate 50,000 servers, is based on an unlikely design: the chicken coop.

Known as the Yahoo! Commuting Coop (Y!CC), the building is long and narrow to provide good air circulation and is shaped similar to a chicken coop. The 120’ x 60’ building design maximizes the flow of outside air for cooling versus conventional power-guzzling mechanical chillers. When the weather gets too hot, the data center uses an evaporative cooling system.

Air enters the building through massive side-wall louvers and gets pulled through the servers. Warm exhaust air rises into the narrow cupola at the top and exits through the louvers located there. The site was chosen with sustainability in mind, from the cool climate that allows outside-air cooling almost year-round from the nearby Niagara Falls.

Some key facts to note about the Y!CC Design:

– Y!CC Facility gets access to renewable hydroelectric power.
– Inspiration for facility came from architecture in Buffalo, where industrial facilities were designed to make most of region’s cool air.
– Y!CC design yielded 2% annualized cost to cool with evaporative cooling.
– 36 million gallons of water were saved per year with Y!CC compared to conventional water-cooled chiller plant designs.
– Y!CC design created 40% cut in amount of electricity used compared to industry-typical data centers.
– Department of Energy in 2010 recognized Y!CC as being best-in-class, energy-efficient design by awarding Yahoo! a $9.9 million sustainability grant.
– In 2011, the US Patent Office awarded Yahoo! a patent for their “Integrated Building Based Air Handler Server Farm Cooling System.”

In 2016 Yahoo! incorporated a G-O2® Living Wall into their utility space because they were interested in increasing their “green” presence. They felt the gorgeous new building for their call center in upstate New York would be a perfect spot. Not only would the living wall provide them the “green” exposure they desired, they also felt it would greatly contribute to the aesthetic beauty of their new Y!CC Facility.

Spanning 62 feet, the living wall is segmented into 7 sections. Plant Connection provided Yahoo! with multiple design options to choose from for greening their acoustic wall. Yahoo! selected a curvilinear design that flows through the panel groupings to help create one continuous living wall, while providing contrast to the existing façade. Nine varieties of sedum were planted to create the organic, free flowing design, supplying four seasons of interest, color, and texture.

Similarly, companies like Google, Apple, and other cloud computing providers are all trying to use renewable energy to power their data centers, helping to contribute to reductions in global warming, cut energy costs and comply with regulations. But nothing more boldly says you are being environmentally conscious than a green wall greeting visitors and employees!

Greenroofs.com Project of the Week for November 21, 2016: Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall

Project Week Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall Lockport

Greenroofs.com Project of the Week: 11/21/16

Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall
Lockport, NY, USA
475 sf. Greenwall

Project of the Week Mini Description & Details

Completed in 2015, Yahoo!’s newest data center is a 155,000 square foot complex in Lockport, NY. PKJB Architectural Group and others utilized integrated building design to eliminate HVAC units, resulting in 40% less energy and 95% less water usage than conventional facilities. Located within the cool climate of nearby Niagara Falls, the air-cooled data center, which can accommodate 50,000 servers, is based on an unlikely design: the chicken coop. Known as the Yahoo! Commuting Coop (Y!CC), the buildings are long and narrow to provide good air circulation and shaped similar to a chicken coop. Yahoo! is committed to being an environmentally responsible company, and the addition of a G-O2® Living Wall by Plant Connection is just one leafy example.

Project Week Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall Lockport

In 2016 Yahoo! incorporated the acoustic Living Wall into their Y!CC utility space because they were interested in increasing their “green” presence. They felt the gorgeous new building for their call center in upstate New York would be a perfect spot. Not only would the living wall provide the “green” exposure they desired, they also felt it would greatly contribute to the aesthetic beauty of their new facility. Installed and maintained by Dore Landscape Associates, the living wall is segmented into seven sections and spans 62 feet. Its curvilinear design flows through the panel groupings and helps create one continuous living wall, while providing contrast to the existing façade. Nine varieties of sedum were planted to create the organic, free flowing design, supplying four seasons of interest, color, and texture. Similarly, other cloud computing providers are all trying to use renewable energy to power their data centers, helping to contribute to reductions in global warming, cut energy costs and comply with regulations. But Yahoo! demonstrates that nothing more boldly says you are being environmentally conscious than a green wall greeting visitors and employees!

Project Week Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall Lockport

Project Week Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall Lockport

Year: 2016
Owner: Yahoo! Inc.
Location: Lockport, NY, USA
Building Type: Corporate
Type: Living Wall
System: Single Source Provider
Size: 475 sq.ft.
Slope: 100%
Access: Accessible, Private

Project Week Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall Lockport

Designers/Manufacturers of Record:

Architect: PKJB Architectural Group
Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers
Steel Fabricator: Apollo Steel
Construction: M.A. Mortenson Company
Green Wall System: G-O2 Living Walls, Plant Connection, Inc.
Manufacturer & Grower: Plant Connection, Inc.
Planting Design: Sabrina Buttitta, BSLA, Plant Connection, Inc.
Installation: Dore Landscape Associates
Maintenance: Dore Landscape Associates
2009-2010 Construction Management: Structure Tone

Project Week Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall Lockport

View the Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall PROJECT PROFILE to see ALL of the Photos and Additional Information about this particular project in The International Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database.

Project Week Yahoo! Commuting Coop Living Wall Lockport

Project of the Week Video Feature

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Love the Earth, Plant a Roof (or Wall)!

By Linda S. Velazquez, ASLA, LEED AP, GRP
Greenroofs.com Publisher

Vertical Gardens as Habitat

Imagine being a bird or insect, birthed in a remnant habitat, close to shelter, water, and food sources, shaded and protected by vegetation, within a diverse and well populated food web nurtured by a healthy environment.

Taking to the air, you fly into the breeze, seeking out a space to enter the outer world, your instincts luring you to follow a hereditary migratory pathway that is genetically encoded and entrusted to you to carry forth as a map to ancient habitats that are perfectly developed to host your offspring an a manner that only aeons of repeated, reliable, adaptive conditioning, achieved.

Yet, rather than verdant fields, scrubland, forest, and all manner of natural habitats, you contact obstacles such as roads, trucks, busses, dense populations of humans; glass; concrete and steel-clad buildings; scorching hot asphalt; bone dry surfaces stripped and maintained clear of any life-giving or sustaining resources, water, or shelter.

Local birds are starving or malnourished, exhibiting aggressive behaviour to secure scant meals whilst general species diversity is significantly low. Only the toughest, most aggressive and generalist of species becoming dominant.

Appropriately designed vertical garden technologies offer opportunity to convert our harsh cities into receptive, responsive, resilient, dynamic, and adaptive human habitats, empowered by nurturing ever increasing species diversity.

You’re faced with large populations of only a handful species within your flight through these barren constructions, which the city currently hosts as monoculture pest species that only the most pared-back and low-functioning of habitats might sustain, the “pests” of the city, each hungry for survival and desperate to compete over scant resources.

How are you to find food, a mate, a resting or nesting space, safety, water or respite from the stresses and threats of human-centric, constructed zones? How to survive a mere attempt to navigate the persistently disturbed and changing, harsh, environment to access suitable habitats, if such remain on the other side?

Urban parkland may seem to be fantastic spaces for wildlife, though this is often not the case. Where humans are, disturbance and stress present, for wildlife. Urban parks are generally designed for human comfort and safety, not wildlife services, thus species selections are generally aesthetic, offering low diversity, “commercial” planting densities and planting arrays catering for aesthetic rather than functional, wholesome, and holistic ecological, services.

The maintenance of urban parks and general plantings are often conducted by generalist horticultural staff, for businesses functioning on a highly competitive basis, thus weed control is chemical in nature, often moderately haphazard, tending towards species attrition and loss over time due to overspray and poisoning, whilst pruning is expedited and mechanical, turf areas predominate, frequently functioning as barren monocultures.

Consequently, our native species require urban, vegetated, installations to be developed appropriately should they be expected to function as natural resources. Such targeted intention and design do not perform as hoped-for, unless councils and managing agencies are prepared, suitably educated, highly skilled in the various subjects and skillsets required to synchronise, appropriately fund, manage and structure, to apply and coherently uphold specialist design and ongoing sustainable maintenance of such installations.

Establishing Healthy Urban Cultural Habitats
The outlook seems somewhat bleak, until we reach a point where our cultures are sufficiently mature and appropriately educated, to value natural resources as part of our human habitats and our human habitats as part of what makes us healthy human species.

Non-human species are not guests in human habitats, they are integral parts thereof, highly functional constituent components that render habitats integrated and thus sufficiently dynamic to be responsive and functional and sustainably productive. Diversity is a key, functional, component of the structure of healthy and responsive systems.

Consider each species as a cog within the living machine of ecology
The fewer dynamic components (species) a system has, the fewer responses the system can generate or sustain.

There is a correlation between species diversity and the diversity of impacts upon a living system, that system can respond to. Thus, the progression towards higher diversity, expands a systems capacity to respond to stressors, generate change, support such change and therefore cope. Species are the moving parts of living systems, generating, using, and moving resources and energy-flows into-, through, and out of systems. Humans are one such species within our living habitats, thus our built habitats need to incorporate as much species diversity as possible, if they are to cater for the increase or decrease in resources and wastage we produce, without a constant requirement for human-driven inputs to maintain system health. Living systems are resources we can use or lose.

It is the action of all species within processes of sustainable integration that render human-used spaces healthy habitats. Our ecologies rely upon community to gain wholesome and comprehensive support towards developing resiliency.

Vertical gardens and non-trafficable roof gardens are uniquely identified, with significant benefit, to function as potential refugia for species attempting to co-habit and migrate through our urban, human-centric, constructions. Many parklands retain a high level of disturbance simply due to the presence of humans and the resultant human contact attrition that takes place, and as such, they might provide a limited capacity to support only the most hardy and resilient of species.

Commercial and Residential Habitat Types
Most private & commercial properties frequently host periods of lower levels of human activity, either during business, late night, and early morning hours, potentially providing periods of uninterrupted rest and activity for fauna.  The nature of commercial endeavours where humans spend most daylight hours away from home, whilst predominantly engaged inside working spaces, may support daytime animal activity whilst the closing of most businesses at nighttime, may support nocturnally active species. The addition of a single cat or dog to urban gardens (species that are genetically programmed to range over large areas) can significantly reduce an urban gardens capacity to support a wide range of species.

Vertical gardens are unique in this manner, their vertical orientation offers opportunity to support a wide range of species, those sensitive to predators typical of terrestrial habitats as well as species sensitive to human proximity. Pollinators, birds, and insects may access such spaces, seek resources, protection and respite day and night. Thus, when utilised in combination with terrestrial habitats, we find sympathetic design capable of expanding ecological functioning despite human activity rhythms.

Vertically Orientated Habitats
Many exotic and native plants may host, support, and sustain a diverse range of native, urban-based, species. This is most notable for vascular flowering plants offering pollen, nectar, fruit and seed, foliage, and refuge to a wide range of species assisting with developing a stable food web. Though, such scenarios only function well when the areas also offer ambient conditions conducive to wildlife entering the spaces, thus respite from close proximity to human activity, as well.

This may not apply to vertical garden systems and planting designs requiring cyclic replanting or planting configurations and species selections generating reduced ecological services.

A step further are the ecological niches vertical gardens, which are inherently undisturbed spaces, offer. The vertical orientation of vertical gardens or living walls, present notable ecological service options to a range of species, if precluding human access or limiting it to only the occasional maintenance session. Many species require specific habitat types, with vertically orientated habitat offering support to both pest and prey. Many raptors prefer perching and nesting sites at height, with the associated hunting benefits. Conversely, many seed, nectar and fruit-eating bird species seek defensive benefits from overhead predator attack, thus foliage coverage overhead, or foraging sites away from flat or horizontal surfaces.

Nesting sites within urban settings may be scarce, highly disturbed, and potentially unsafe for most species. Extreme weather is becoming a notable disturbance event for wildlife, exacerbated in cities. Vertical gardens offer vegetated nesting sites, inclusive of short-day active sun impacts on east- and west-facing garden orientations. North and South-facing orientations offer either warmer winter or cooler summer exposures. Overhanging vegetation and close proximity to food and moisture are vital factors, where resources within the urban sphere are mostly fractured, widely dispersed, hence lacking inter-connection.

The benefits of vertical garden and roof garden installations extend by a considerable margin to commercial installations, notably on high-rise buildings offering significant opportunity for migratory species to access them either temporarily or for protracted use.

Vertical gardens may function as refugia to both fauna and flora species, as do cliff-faces and remnant habitats away from the hands and activities of human, general weather, storm, and fire disturbance. In well-integrated cities, they may perform as habitat mosaics, in many cases functioning as wildlife corridors for those species capable of traversing aerial ecologies. This is, unfortunately, not always the case for terrestrial species on the horizontal plane within the general landscape, where the urban sphere is simply too congested with land valued with a bias towards intensive human use.

Vertical garden are capable of supporting thousands of plants across a diverse range of species, on a minuscule footprint of potentially a single foot or mere centimetres. As a result, a vertical garden could host an entire forests worth of plants including the associated species diversity, vertically, over a highly trafficable area, at no cost to building or city floor space.

The closer we are to where human activity abounds, i.e., ground-level, the greater the level of human disturbance presents, thus aerial zones, namely spaces humans mostly access visually rather than physically, are also largely undervalued and under-used.

Most high-rise buildings offer large, mostly underutilised, vertical surface areas. These spaces could be used to support healthy, natural systems and ecologies. Furthermore, they could be value added to, by utilising vertical garden systems capable of processing pollutants, such as wastewater generated by human activity within the host buildings. Stacking such functions, is a quintessentially ecological process. Foliage layering, root system layering, habitat layering, nutrient and water purification and resource re-use, are signatures of healthy systems.

These aerial spaces are invaluable assets for our cities and our conservation efforts where the benefits of creating resilient, adaptable, diverse and functional habitats, across such spheres of development, offer extremely broad (and extended) benefits to not only local use though the wider landscape.

Commercial and Ecological Value of Urban Habitats

Humans are hard-wired to respond favourably, both physiologically and psychologically when accessing natural scenes. This has been discussed in previous blog posts, whereby our health and wellbeing are notably improved even if only visual access to scenes of natural vegetation are available.

It is innate to us to feel calmer, bathed in safety and comfort, when viewing natural scenes offering healthy brain interactions. This stimulates hormone regulation, with resultant beneficial impacts on our health and wellbeing.

Commercially this is vital in the urban sphere, considering vertical garden or roof garden installations offer significant property value increases, a sense of beauty and increased consumer interest. This extends to neighbouring buildings with direct visual access to such installations. Consider, when purchasing or selling a property clad in verdant, beautiful, foliage with fascinating or calming natural installations, the perceived value of host buildings is rendered higher to the investor and tenant, alike. Yet should one view an apartment in a neighbouring building with windows maximising views directly facing such a mesmerising and unique installation, the value of the neighbouring apartment will naturally increase simply due to proximity.

Thus, the value of living within cities offering policies and incentives to maximise living architecture as natural assets, automatically increases for investors and tenants, as perceived liveability enhances their value as commercial assets.

When such installations are designed to actively support healthy ecological functioning, catering for a diverse range of transitory and permanent species across the urban sphere, a notable improvement ensues. Cities with active and healthy ecological functioning, reduce harsh exposures, reduce pollution, increase diversity, increase dynamic adaptability and vegetation resiliency, reduce monocultured pest and disease influx, and cumulatively increase potential functionalities humans place great value on. Cities are human habitats.

Requirements for Appropriate Expertise

Human habitats require receptiveness, sensitivity, and specialised understanding of species diversity to remain functional, resilient, and adaptable, though achieving such requires specialised understanding and design skill expertise, to see this realised, sustainably.

General residential gardens and urban parkland may offer benefit to persistent and migratory wildlife, though to extend ecological services to provide greater benefit to a wider range of species, all of which are entirely reliant upon us to offer support, we require design processes to target appropriate habitat production that empowers such installations to function as refugia.

Simply placing terrestrial plants species on vertical surfaces does not automatically provide appropriate ecosystem services to migratory invertebrates and birds. Remnant habitats, and designed ecologies alike, require specialist knowledge to design, maintain and sustain, which is exacerbated by the vertical plane. There are an overwhelming plethora of species around the world that have evolved specifically within vertically orientated habitats, with remarkable adaptations to survive and thrive within the associated vertically orientated ecologies. These are highly complex assemblages of species capable of rapidly altering the exposures they colonise towards ever increasing densities and diversities. Understanding this requires highly specialised knowledge, fields of expertise rarely encountered within the general garden and landscape design spheres.

This area of expertise encompasses fascinating and potentially very productive areas of development for professionals, researchers, and educators, alike.

It’s incumbent upon us to prioritise these areas of expertise, ensuring vertical garden & roof garden technologies are wielded in an appropriate manner that maximises their ability to offer much needed, expanded, ecological services within the urban realm. This will stimulate policy to maximise their potential, whilst simultaneously directing the living architecture industry to focus upon developing and applying system types that are capable of hosting appropriate, permanent, vegetation solutions able to support and sustain healthy, long-term, ecological services.

Appropriately designed vertical garden technologies offer opportunity to convert our harsh cities into receptive, responsive, resilient, dynamic, and adaptive human habitats, empowered by nurturing ever increasing species diversity.

Healthy people are denizens of healthy habitats, healthy habitats generate healthy people and cultures. I hope we may start looking upwards and outwards from our constructed habitats, and see the potential inherent to vertical gardens, to act as refugia for a wide range of species, though also refugia for pragmatic, holistic and dynamic thinking.

Integrating wildlife into our human habitats, provides medicine, nourishment and valuable resources to systems offering resiliency, adaptability, and healthy outcomes.

Vertical gardens offer the potential for us to channel these benefits upwards and across our homes, industries, and cities.


~ Erik van Zuilekom

Erik van Zuilekom - Fytogreen

Erik van Zuilekom is Fytogreen’s in-house Botanist and a species selection & design specialist – vertical garden & living architecture applications. Offering astute design & assessment expertise for the production of adaptive, robust & resilient (designed) ecologies. I would like to see green life ecologies deeply integrated into the urban fabric & psyche, not as passive claddings, rather as responsive technologies.

Fytogreen is Australia’s leading green infrastructure specialist and technical knowledge is gained from its targeted research and development process. Fytogreen is fortunate to be a leader in this field, with experience gained through exposure to an extensive diversity of applications, coupled with long-term monitoring of these installations.

Contact Erik: unitednatures@yahoo.com.au
Follow Erik on Instagram – United Natures Design

If you have a specific topic your would like covered by Erik or have any comments, please email lisa@fytogreen.com.au

Achieving Longevity, Adaptability, Stability, and Sustainability in LIVING ARCHITECTURE Systems

Ecologies are living systems, relentless processes simultaneously testing additions, modifying each change on-site and within real-time based upon modifying pressures whilst persistently feeding off excesses and by-products. This unfolding generates integrated systems whereby each ‘loss’ or ‘failure’ becomes fodder for the next generation to feed off whilst repeatedly using survival strategies to push boundaries, based upon effective and immediate resource management and conservation. This leads to perpetual adaptation and evolution towards ever more integrated and complex systems as solutions.

Living architecture systems are varied due to the convoluted nature of architecture, its relationship with achieving high density, maximising use per square meter of footprint and utility for inhabitants and contributions towards visual amenity of onlookers.

Consequently, many system types have developed to allow us to host plants on buildings, i.e., on podium, on and upwards above ground level. Each system is tailored to suit areas the host architecture presents to be colonised by plants, whether that is penetrations into the ground, available space on vertical surfaces such as walls, projections from the host wall surface, on raised floors or supports, on roof spaces or even voids within or around the host building where colonising zones may be suspended.

In most cases, weight bearing capacity of the host architecture initiates the first conversations regarding feasibility for the building to support planted zones, followed by irrigation, drainage and finally though not least exposures and available resources to sustain healthy and thriving plantings.

Achieving notable longevity, stability and sustainability requires integrating living architecture technologies with the host architecture to achieve stable compatibilities. This is akin to engineering an engine into a car or designing a functional component into an engine. The two require support and harmony, a back-and-forth flow of input and output to generate a balance the system can manage to maintain without experiencing excessive wear and tear.

Taking this further requires the hardware system to allow for hosting processes that generate biological balance, thus mitigating against process or biological fatigue. Afterall, the hardware, whether that be a planter on a balcony, a vertical garden ascending the sides of a building, a roof garden, or suspended columns within the atrium void of a building, all these components for all their complexity are ultimately merely hosts for plants and their associated biological processes of growth and development.

Achieving reduced biological fatigue necessitates designing with nature to support its universal and relentless process of building up and breaking down (entropy and syntropy). Anything that stands in the way of gravity, erosion through wind, sun, warmth, cold or mechanical bombardment or the inevitable processes of biological decomposition, will require the ability to withstand such fatigue or to rebuild and regenerate, to persist. Commercially, this entails working with components and processes requiring minimal inputs to maintain. Nature achieves this through slowly, incrementally, ‘growing’ systems one piece at a time.

Each incremental addition is tested by attrition with stresses and overloads generally leading to removal, ingestion and/or replacement with whatever the local environment supplies from allied developments, such as water, leaf litter, new seedlings or fauna emerging along organic tangents. Thus, the process relentlessly unfolds, with building block repeatedly adding to a falling away as the systems build and adapt to the pressures of the moment.

Fytogreen applies this core knowledge to focus upon generating living architecture planting solutions capable of adapting, reconfiguring and rejuvenating via natural and inherent processes of ecological unfolding. This is a particular approach to design.

In terms of vertical gardens, this entails utilising species originating from specific epiphytic or lithophytic ecologies in habitat, where they have evolved particular adaptations to thrive on the vertical plane, rather than attempting to force terrestrial, landscape, species to persist on the vertical, a mode of live which is significantly separated from their genetic imperative gained through generations of living in horizontal soils.

Using these species is certainly not sufficient to achieve sustainable, resilient and adaptive outcomes. We take this further by carefully researching their habitats and learning how and why each species is found there, the intricacies of each exposure, level of competition, limits of each environmental ‘fatigue or stress’ impact and what each species is doing within the mixed species community. Armed with such insights, we then apply each species based upon such observations, to generate pragmatic configurations to address each individual exposure type playing out over each host wall surface.

For Roof Gardens, Planter Boxes, FytoArbours, Column Gardens, Floating Wetlands and terrestrial applications, the same ecological mode of analysis and design apply. Roof gardens require species with specific and general adaptations to survive in shallow substrate profiles, heightened wind and sun exposures, fluctuating moisture gradients, root zone thermal fluctuations, etc.

We recognise the role of pioneer, secondary and tertiary colonising species. Support species, structural species and ephemeral species play roles within mixed species ecologies, spreading stress loadings across entire populations rather than loading such stressors onto isolated specimens or monocultures. In many instances, such fatigue stress may only be recognisable via pest and disease influx, over time, misleading less experienced designers and horticulturists to assume the pests are merely naturally occurring anomalies rather than symptoms of an excessively stress-loaded design which is not sustainable or adaptive.

PARAGON APARTMENTS | Freshly Planted, Feb 2021 – Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

PARAGON APARTMENTS | 2 Years On, Jan 2023 – Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

The word sustainability can be misleading, referring to the ability to keep something functioning regardless of the resource input requirement, or may provide a flashy slogan aimed to represent an appealing ‘sustainable’ branding based upon an individual component rather than an entire system or product. For this reason, I prefer to refer to adaptability, resiliency, stability, regenerative and ecological ‘systems’ design processes to represent the type of sustainability referred to in this article.

The aim is to generate living architecture plantings which do not require cyclic replacement or ongoing replanting. Stability requires adaptability, the ability to expand and self-repair, regenerate and express each species genetic imperative to thrive form juvenile to mature form into integrated communities. Systems capable of hosting and sustaining such maturing communities work with nature, allow planted communities to establish into integrated ecologies. This imbues each garden with a modicum of flexibility to adapt and evolve to suit changing site conditions, rather than remaining in a static state or stasis, incapable of responding to the daily challenges of life without human intervention and additional resource inputs.


Next time you are considering utilising living architecture or terrestrial gardens or systems, whether for urban or rural, commercial, residential or industrial spheres, consider carefully what the most efficient & resilient, long-term, outcome may be. Each project is an opportunity to work with nature, to wield natural processes towards efficient, adaptable, and sustainable outcomes.

Consider whether the company you’re planning to engage and the systems they utilise, are sufficiently educated, informed, experienced, and appropriately designed to provide you with the longevity & stability we require within the current climate.


~ Erik van Zuilekom

Erik van Zuilekom - Fytogreen

Erik van Zuilekom is Fytogreen’s in-house Botanist and a species selection & design specialist – vertical garden & living architecture applications. Offering astute design & assessment expertise for the production of adaptive, robust & resilient (designed) ecologies. I would like to see green life ecologies deeply integrated into the urban fabric & psyche, not as passive claddings, rather as responsive technologies.

Fytogreen is Australia’s leading green infrastructure specialist and technical knowledge is gained from its targeted research and development process. Fytogreen is fortunate to be a leader in this field, with experience gained through exposure to an extensive diversity of applications, coupled with long-term monitoring of these installations.

Contact Erik: unitednatures@yahoo.com.au.

High Line Redux 2023, Part 1 of 2

High Line Redux, Part 1

All Photos by and ©Steven L. Cantor, ASLA Except as Noted

I previously presented a series of photographic essays on the High Line in 2013-2015, A Comparison of the 3 Phases of the High Line 14-Part Series.

It’s stimulating to revisit this now much more well-established park, although a work in progress because major construction is still occurring adjacent to it. Even though the High Line was at first completely closed during the COVID-19 lockdown, park management has found effective ways of opening it during the pandemic, and the public has clearly relished it as an open space system and garden, and a place for exercise, fresh air, conversation, and art.

Rather than a long essay, I offer bulleted points and thoughts for your consideration in two parts from additional High Line walks of November 2022 and December 2021:

1. The High Line is a well-established, continually evolving pinnacle of urban design in Manhattan and has inspired many similar designs all over the world. Elements of its integrated design have assumed legendary status, even iconic.

High Line Redux

Sunning on the High Line

High Line Redux

The High Line’s icons include the large benches on wheels on the Barry Diller Diane Von Furstenberg Plaza, one of the most popular places for sunbathing and socializing.

High Line Redux

A young man sits with a backdrop of a Smokebush (Cotinus coggygria).

High Line Redux

High Line Redux

Two other widely recognized icons are the Tenth Avenue Square where people sit and watch cars go by underneath them as they sit on comfortable wooden risers and the integrated design of wooden benches throughout the park.

2. The High Line still impacts its surroundings as new buildings are erected, plantings are updated, new art is installed, the neighborhood evolves, and gentrification continues.

High Line Redux

6.25.12

High Line Redux

11.19.21. The contrast in architecture from two views of the same site shows the remarkable changes as a result of new architectural construction almost over a decade.

From its beginning point at Gansevoort Street to its termination at Hudson Yards, there is a diversity of striking architecture by notable masters such as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, and many emerging younger talents.

3. The High Line was closed down totally during COVID-19, then opened with social distancing guidelines. (The Interim Walkway, the loop wrapping around Hudson Yards, remains closed intermittently as there is ongoing construction at the rail yards.) There has been some discussion among planners and city officials about possibly relocating Madison Square Garden over the western part of Hudson Yards, which would, of course, impact the Interim Walkway. At the same time development of the original plans for the second phase of Hudson Yards have been delayed.

Visitors may enter without registering on a smartphone app Monday through Thursday all day long, as well as on Friday mornings, but on weekends there used to be a requirement that they must register ahead of time to control crowding. This has now ended. This method, of course, limited the use of the High Line on weekends to those who have smartphones or laptops, or people whose friends do. Admission remains free. Signs now indicate, “Masks are recommended.” Earlier signs said, “Masks required.”

Two images show the High Line’s efforts to comply with the demands of the COVID pandemic: the highlight is above an entrance sign; the detail is along a walk.

Jump ahead to the spring of 2022 and these registration requirements were lifted. I’ve walked sections of the High Line when it’s been quite crowded although not as dense as I recall pre-pandemic. 

 4. There are still many restrictions against bicycles, skate boards, roller skates, and even pets, but given the intense use, and the obstacles caused by the railroad tracks and uneven pavements and many intricacies within the design, I see no alternatives.

5. At odd hours joggers are running, an activity that seems potentially dangerous. However, when I’ve watched joggers, they are clearly experienced on the “High Line Course,” as if they’ve previously walked it and examined every obstacle, so they know every intricacy in their path.

6. Elevators are located at multiple locations, although more appear needed. At major entrances there is a unified, thematic treatment of pavements, stairs, and plantings.

7. Maintenance costs are high, yet funding is well established through the NYC Parks Department, www.thehighline.org, and private donations. At any sign of graffiti or out-of-order issue, there is an immediate response from staff.

In the last year (perhaps coinciding with directions from the High Line’s new director Richard Hayden), the staff has engaged in a rigorous maintenance program including weeding, deadheading, thinning canopies to let more light in, and removing the occasional dead specimen or weak planting. The impact seems to be invigorating the plantings which remain.

A team of High Line staff shows up to address a graffito sketched on the pavement.

A typical Friends of the High Line cart with staff giving directions, leaflets, information.

8. After years of experimentation, effective knee-high black edging separating planting beds from walkways has been consistently installed and is clearly visible. Surprisingly, there are still a few locations where it is missing. I am unsure if it’s been deemed unnecessary in some locations, or if the construction crews have just not reached that particular location as yet.

High Line Redux

High Line Redux

High Line Redux

Edging separating pavement and planting bed is just visible enough to be effective and not distracting.

High Line Redux

At times a slight elevation change at edges is necessary to keep people from stepping into the beds. Earlier edging was green; more recent is black, stiffer and more sturdy, with buckles.

9. The water features and drinking fountains were finally activated in the summer of 2021; in May they were still inoperative, so there must have been a threshold of safety relating to COVID-19 concerns that was reached, at which point it was determined that it was safe to make them once again operational.

High Line Redux

Another iconic feature is the recirculating sheet of water opposite the sunbathing benches, which draw large crowds of people of all ages. Its appearance is dramatically different when dry, yet still effective. The drinking fountains are popular, so it’s helpful when they are labeled not in service during winter months.

10. The urban design principles that were established are sound, so when violated, they are striking, such as the 10-story limit to buildings abutting the corridor.[1] This is noticeable, for example, with Thomas Heatherwick’s Lantern House buildings constructed on either side of the High Line between 17th Street and 18th Street, completed in September 2021.[2] [3]

High Line Redux

Thomas Heatherwick’s twin Lantern House buildings on right. Image: Mark Davies

A towering view over the High Line of One High Line by BIG on the left and Thomas Heatherwick’s Lantern House on the right. Image: Mark Davies

I believe that whichever developer owned the property donated a parcel on the east side which was to become the visitor center for the High Line, in return for which the owner was allowed to build taller. It’s an unfortunate tradeoff; eventually, the High Line did not opt for that location. The impact of construction of the building itself has been severe, as all but shade trees have been removed, and the beds are being prepared for new perennials. The twin buildings feature condo towers, over 20 stories tall on the west side, 10 stories on the east side, which will be linked underneath the park, and include barrel vaulted windows of a unique shape which will accent the architecture. 

The stiffer and sturdier edging is seen at the base of Thomas Heatherwick’s barrel-vaulted buildings which rise well above the previously limited height restrictions set for the High Line, creating a canyon-like effect.

One High Line by BIG under construction. Image: Mark Davies

High Line Redux

Image: Mark Davies

Immediately adjacent is an even taller complex, One High Line, twin 26 and 36 story luxury condo towers designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) at 11th Avenue. Previously caught up in bankruptcy proceedings perhaps exacerbated by the pandemic, it is now scheduled for debut this summer.[4] [5]

11. Some portions of the High Line are covered with what has come to be almost permanent scaffolding to protect pedestrians from ongoing construction or existing conditions.

High Line Redux

Image: Mark Davies

12. Given the High Line’s dedicated commitment to sculpture and art, it would be an innovation to sponsor a competition for ways to reimagine and redefine scaffolding so that it adds to the character of the park rather than continues as an eyesore.

High Line Redux

Semi-permanent and temporary scaffolding: What if they were painted, decorated, or envisaged in a sculpturally artistic way? VOILA!! Instead of being squeezed through a narrow bottleneck or being forced to look at standard hardware, pedestrians could relish something delightful and fun.

13. There is irrigation, and variable depths of plantings (extensive or intensive green roof). The city periodically experiences heat waves and droughts, so irrigation is essential to the survival of the plant materials, no matter how hardy and drought resistant they are.

Occasionally trees or other plantings die. The main reasons seem to be due to construction activities or loss of irrigation.

High Line Redux

Note the contrast between two areas, one where the irrigation is working, and one where it is not.

14. Throughout the High Line plant materials are remarkably resilient, even when totally shaded on one or two sides. It helps that the route runs primarily north to south, so that the plantings benefit from morning or afternoon exposures.

15. All over there is an inspired use of diverse plant materials, particularly perennials. It is a great outdoor setting to study what thrives and what does not. It has even changed established practices about what species of trees will grow in an urban setting and how to plant them, for example, dogwoods, magnolias, and sassafras.

High Line Redux

Sambucus in foreground with Kousa Dogwood in background.

High Line Redux

Bigleaf Magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla)

Gayfeather (Liatris spicata)

High Line Redux

Woodland with Bigleaf Magnolia in foreground.

Elderberry (Sambucus sp)

High Line Redux

Staghorn Sumac (Sumac typhina)

Join me next time for the second and final installment of my High Line Redux 2023.

Cumulative “High Line Redux 2023, Part 1 of 2” Series End-notes

[1] See Amended Zoning Resolutions for H and I https://zr.planning.nyc.gov/article-ix/chapter-8. Also, three conversations with Mark Davies of Higher Ground Horticulture in October and November, 2021 and February 2023.

[2] https://www.dezeen.com/2018/01/10/thomas-heatherwick-515-west-18th-street-condo-towers-bulging-windows-chelsea-new-york/ and www.lanternhouse.com                                                                                                                          

[3] https://www.designboom.com/architecture/heatherwick-studio-lantern-house-new-york-city-complete-high-line-09-16-2021/ 

[4] https://nypost.com/2021/10/21/high-line-nyc-towers-the-twists-could-face-more-delays/

[5] https://news.yahoo.com/inside-bjarke-ingels-stunning-pair-193000324.html   

Publisher’s Note:

See the High Line Project Profiles in the Greenroofs.com Projects Database for High Line, Phase 1; High Line, Phase 2; and High Line, Phase 3.

Steven L. Cantor, Landscape Architect

Little Island MNLA 3

Photo by Thomas Riis

Steven L. Cantor is a registered Landscape Architect in New York and Georgia with a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He first became interested in landscape architecture while earning a BA at Columbia College (NYC) as a music major. He was a professor at the School of Environmental Design, University of Georgia, Athens, teaching a range of courses in design and construction in both the undergraduate and graduate programs. During a period when he earned a Master’s Degree in Piano in accompanying, he was also a visiting professor at the College of Environmental Design at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has also taught periodically at the New York Botanical Garden (Bronx) and was a visiting professor at Anhalt University, Bernberg, Germany.

He has worked for over four decades in private practice with firms in Atlanta, GA and New York City, NY, on a diverse range of private development and public works projects throughout the eastern United States: parks, streetscapes, historic preservation applications, residential estates, public housing, industrial parks, environmental impact assessment, parkways, cemeteries, roof gardens, institutions, playgrounds, and many others.

Steven has written widely about landscape architecture practice, including two books that survey projects: Innovative Design Solutions in Landscape Architecture and Contemporary Trends in Landscape Architecture (Van Nostrand Reinhold, John Wiley & Sons, 1997). His book Green Roofs in Sustainable Landscape Design (WW Norton, 2008), provides definitions of the types of green roofs and sustainable design, studies European models, and focuses on detailed case studies of diverse green roof projects throughout North America. In 2010 the green roofs book was one of thirty-five nominees for the 11th annual literature award by the international membership of The Council on Botanical & Horticultural Libraries for its “outstanding contribution to the literature of horticulture or botany.”

Steven’s most recent book is Professional and Practical Considerations for Landscape Design (Oxford University Press, 2020) where he explains the field of landscape architecture, outlining with authority how to turn drawings of designs into creative, purposeful, and striking landscapes and landforms in today’s world.

He has been a regular attendee and contributor at various ASLA, green roofs and other conferences in landscape architecture topics. In recent years Steven has had more time for music activities, as a solo pianist and accompanist.

Steven joined the Greenroofs.com editorial team in December, 2013 as the Landscape Editor. In February, 2015 he completed his 14-part series “A Comparison of the Three Phases of the High Line, New York City: A Landscape Architect and Photographer’s Perspective“and a survey of green roofs in Copenhagen Green Tour 2015.

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Roof gardens are inherently specialized. They are a departure from terrestrial gardens on a range of levels, notably height above ground, reduced available rooting volumes, changes in growing media to suit use on structures and just as importantly, the stresses imposed upon plants that are grown above- and on “the edge” of buildings.

Plants are dynamic lifeforms that are evolving within mixed species communities in a range of habitats which are different due to their conditions and the stresses inherent to their unique locations.

Climate type; soil type; nutrient availability; sun; shade; wind and moisture all impact how plants grow, the forms they evolve, and how these forms impact their capacity to cope with change.

These factors are the basic considerations most gardeners and designers think of, though these are entry-level considerations forming the foundation upon which ecologies evolve. Plants do not grow in isolation as specimens evolving in a static environment, they develop amidst competition for all the aforementioned resources with random challenges influencing them amidst storms, droughts, herbivore migration and short- and long-term changes to the balances within their immediate and extended environment. Consequently, plants are in a process of persistent evolution, attempting to survive seen and unseen influences.

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

The form, size, colour, and rate of growth and reproduction plants evolve are merely the visible aspects we so readily observe. Whilst medicine, education and the science continue to learn and understand life progresses, we’re realizing we need to gain higher understanding of what things are and how they fit into their environment to better use, treat, and wield them most effectively. This extends not only to humans as animals but plants upon which our entire human habitat evolves, which feeds the animals and other plants we rely upon to survive and which prop up our ability to live within this closed ecological system on Earth.

Ornamental gardens are part of human habitats whether they are merely visual extensions of what we seek to surround ourselves with, or rendered into usable, multi-functional installations capable of providing extended benefits to humans and our wider environment. Roof gardens are key solutions to achieving this in our built environments. Healthy, dynamic and adaptive roof gardens require healthy, dynamic, and adaptive plants. Whilst plants do not function in isolation, we therefore understand that achieving favourable outcomes offering longevity and adaptability require healthy, dynamic, and adaptive plant communities, mixed-species plantings functioning as more than the sum of their parts.

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Each garden is therefore an ecology, where constant competition for space and resources plays out as a process of unfolding as gardens mature. Static gardens are snippets of reality, held in suspension through ongoing human effort and as such offer reduced sustainability, ecological functioning and support not only for the garden, but the roof garden industry as a living and evolving entity.

Biodiversity in roof gardens is therefore not a choice based upon aesthetic alone, biodiversity is a technology, it hosts the moving parts that comprise a biological engine that can be harnessed to achieve a range of outcomes, a vehicle that increases its influence over a wider area than its mere footprint.

This is an exciting space to be as a designer, a client, and for the wider industry. Biodiversity is increasingly required to address the challenges inherent to gardens located within the urban sphere.

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

Achieving the above outcomes for roof gardens requires specialized design input. Understanding the technology, its tolerances, capacities, and local climate conditions is paramount. Similarly, the technology is best utilized by understanding which plants perform best in roof garden conditions. Plants are constantly trialed and monitored through long-term maintenance, post installation, allowing us to generate a detailed detailed understanding of performance.

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

Roof gardens experience diverse exposure types which may frequently not be experienced by terrestrial gardens; therefore, species selection is often significantly different to how we would design a general garden outcome. Many species well adapted to use in roof gardens come from habitat types which display similar exposure types akin to specific roof garden exposure types. Wind exposures involving high levels of turbulence or laminar air flows, coupled with rapid transitions between moist and dry cycles and root zone heating, require species with specialist adaptations to survive or thrive within, thus it is not unheard of that a succulent or drought tolerant species may not survive in a roof garden even though they display such traits in the general landscape.

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

By extension, the ecologies and companion species associated with a particular species or exposure type evolve specific traits to deal with such exposures. In many cases assessing a single species in isolation may not provide notable benefit to a roof garden’s function as a whole whilst the plant community, when functioning as an integrated whole, may be much more resilient, dynamic, responsive, and consistent than the sum of its parts. Certain species provide wind protection, others provide sun protection, many thrive in the shade of others and act as living mulches, whilst many others may seed and prevent weed influx between a host of long-lived and structural species which offer diverse habitat types and visual interest.

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

Designing with ecologies and therefore the biodiversity that underlies functional and resilient gardens is a multi-dimensional approach which is sourly underrepresented in the garden design, landscape architecture, and living architecture industries. As per ecological assessments in habitat, designing with ecologies on buildings requires repeated observation and adjustment to generate resiliency, adaptive and site-specific (appropriate) outcomes.

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

As we move through Australia, its many climates from alpine; cool temperate; oceanic; warm temperate; subtropical; tropical and wet to arid exposures through each respectively (to name a few), we also encounter windy and protected, coastal and inland matrices each of which requires variations in assessment and design methodologies. Biodiversity provides us with tools to be responsive to site, client needs, expectations, timelines, and to generate functional ecologies.

Evolving Roof Garden Biodiversity

Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia

Whether we design for formal, informal, natural or habitat aesthetics, biodiversity aids us in merging gardens on platform with the surrounding landscape. This ensures our human habitats are up to the task to cope with change, engage the wider community and provide for us as opposed to constantly require inputs from us to survive or cope.

Biodiversity allows us to design with nature, thus gifting ourselves, our clients, and the built environment with added value that inherently generates, responds, and self-perpetuates. It’s a valuable tool that provides cost-savings and resiliency when we need it most.

~ Erik van Zuilekom

Erik van Zuilekom - Fytogreen

Erik van Zuilekom is Fytogreen’s in-house Botanist and a species selection & design specialist – vertical garden & living architecture applications. Offering astute design & assessment expertise for the production of adaptive, robust & resilient (designed) ecologies. I would like to see green life ecologies deeply integrated into the urban fabric & psyche, not as passive claddings, rather as responsive technologies.

Fytogreen is Australia’s leading green infrastructure specialist and technical knowledge is gained from its targeted research and development process. Fytogreen is fortunate to be a leader in this field, with experience gained through exposure to an extensive diversity of applications, coupled with long-term monitoring of these installations.

Contact Erik: unitednatures@yahoo.com.au.

Vertical Garden Biodiversity

Vertical Garden Biodiversity

Observing vertical gardens, we are frequently immersed in those aspects of gardens which are immediately observable, notably foliage, planting densities and the often-dramatic contrast between the hard, smooth, built environment and the lush, complex, textures, and movement provided by vegetation: Vertical Garden Biodiversity.

What the eye sees often belies the complexity and multidimensionality of what lies beneath such technologies. Gardens on the vertical plane are specialized and multi-functional, offering high carrying capacities for species, notably those transcending the simplicity of pots on a wall.

Vertical garden technologies have evolved into significantly refined and complex systems utilized to fulfill specialized functions relating to the architecture, function, and engineering requirements of contemporary buildings.

Heating, cooling, pollution stripping, wind management, sound attenuation, water processing, and habitat production represent initial functionalities required to be provided and expanded upon.

Delivering the above mentioned functions starts with the technologies hardware, though extends well beyond this to the principal host technology such installations are designed and built to support: vegetation.

“Embracing diversity in vertical gardens is a requirement as we place ever greater demands upon our installations.”

Plants are a technology, ecology (the combination of a plethora species functioning together as a dynamic whole) is an extension of plants as technologies. Plants have evolved, over millions of years, to generate highly refined capacities and tolerances to cope with very specific exposures. Plants on the exterior of a building, whether wrapped around a building wall or scaling a skyscraper to notable heights where winds and turbulence and even temperature fluctuations may be harsh, are certainly niches which seem extraordinary.

Each exposure type may be dramatically different, transitioning from permanent full shade to permanent full sun over a space of mere centimeters, inclusive of high wind shear, buffeting, reflected heat, dry winds to walls functioning as storm barriers.

Our cities are no different to mountains and natural features; they are often constructed from concrete, ground-up rock, melted sands into glass, metals and natural materials. Our city streets are constructed urban canyons, our buildings are cliff faces poised to be colonized by species specialized to access and grow on the vertical plane, often elevated to great heights and in shallow or almost non-existent substrates.

Here enters the mystery and complexity of aerial ecologies. Around the world, we find species colonizing trees and cliff faces encompassing all the aforementioned exposure-types and variations.

Vertical Garden Biodiversity

Each exposure type is colonized by specific species, many of which are not tolerant of variations to such exposures; many are specialized to cope with a niche that is small, yet encircled by vastly different combinations of exposures. These complex plant assemblages, the isolated specimens they comprise and the mixed species colonies they eventually expand into, both slowly start changing the conditions they are found in and on. When a plant arrives, it brings a modicum of change, a bit of shading, some wind protection, a little moisture capture and the slow accumulation of old leaves and plants, which invariably start decomposing into aerial soils. Many such soils are blown away, though some tenacious roots and leaves may hold onto it, with the mixture of living and decomposing materials evolving into living soils and substrates into which new species may arrive.

Each new arrival increases vegetation density, competition, protection, moisture capture, and nutrient release. This is a highly complex process of accumulation, life and death and development as the complexities of the aerial ecologies expand.

It is inevitable that the conditions initially encountered become changed. If this was a bare wall on a building, it would transition from being exposed, heated, dried and barren, to shaded, cooled, moistened and verdant with life. Pollution captured by leaves, roots, and microbes becomes a layer of food for the living wall. Acid rain is captured, and dust, exhaust fumes, salts in water, chlorine and other mainstay components of high density human habitats become resources the aerial ecologies may capitalize upon.

For this process to start, settle, strengthen, respond, specialize, and accumulate, it requires highly detailed species selection processes and considerations. Designing to achieve these unfolding processes requires highly specialized design skills and ecological understanding. It is an exciting field to be working in with each city, climate-type, and building architecture, requiring a different type and subset of plant community to cater for the vastly different exposure types inherent to our built environments.

Vertical Garden BiodiversityConsequently, there is a requirement to use plants not as things we regard in terms of merely their aesthetic, shape, form, colour and texture, rather as technologies.

Each species represents an evolved technological achievement having originated in a different part of the world, within unique environments, competing with specific neighbouring species, and seeking to achieve a unique evolutionary outcome to successfully maintain survival and responsiveness to its particular life story. This life story is unfolding, never completed.

Utilizing high species diversity allows the designer (and the garden) to be responsive to site, clients’ varying needs, and to generate outcomes capable of being dynamic, potentially self-repairing, capable of reconfiguring and adjusting balances within the often harsh and changing constructed environment.

Diversity is not merely a design decision or aesthetic treatment, it is a technological application. A diverse ecology may be capable of generating resiliency. Low diversity places heightened stress and expectation upon a few species to perform multiple roles and tasks, thus higher diversity allows for the distribution of stressors and external pressures over the community as a whole, thereby reducing individual stress loadings and aiding individual specimens and communities to function more freely.

There are many hidden mysteries, complexities, and capabilities within diverse environments and ecologies which we are barely capable of conceiving, observing, or understanding. As we unfold the layers of species stratification in habitats and plant communities within the build environment, inclusive of those right under our noses, we frequently discover surprising and highly functional processes working towards generating balance and resiliency, which we were unto this point completely unaware.

Embracing diversity in vertical gardens is a requirement as we place ever greater demands upon our installations, expecting beauty, lower maintenance requirements, reduced resource input reliance, and higher tolerances all at a lower price to the consumer. Increased diversity becomes a vital component of achieving such outcomes.

Nature and nurture are amusingly synonymous in this context, with diverse ecologies becoming a trait of elegant simplicity at its highest level.

~ Erik van Zuilekom

Erik van Zuilekom - Fytogreen

Erik van Zuilekom is Fytogreen’s in-house Botanist and a species selection & design specialist – vertical garden & living architecture applications. Offering astute design & assessment expertise for the production of adaptive, robust & resilient (designed) ecologies. I would like to see green life ecologies deeply integrated into the urban fabric & psyche, not as passive claddings, rather as responsive technologies. Fytogreen is Australia’s leading green infrastructure specialist.

Contact Erik: unitednatures@yahoo.com.au.

Green Urban Infrastructure and Green Roofs

Green Urban Infrastructure and Green Roofs: Achievable Benefits in the Context of Sustainable Cities and the European Green Deal

The World Expo Zaragoza 2008, the “Agua Compartida” (Shared Water) Pavilion; Photo Courtesy & Copyright ZinCo.

The European Green New Deal and role of urban greening

The European Green Deal is an international proposal that lays out a plan to tackle climate changes, and reduce fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also aims at guaranteeing new high-paying jobs and markets in clean and green energy industries. Within this context, the resilience of cities under climate change is increasingly central in urban planning worldwide.

Urban greening and the related green infrastructures represent a potential method to mitigate the effects of climate changes at the urban scale. The greening of grey surfaces through a vegetated cover on their top layer can deliver multiple benefits as a vegetated surface uses rainwater for evapotranspiration, gradually releasing it, and thus reducing urban flooding and pollutant load in water and wastewater networks. Additional benefits are also generated, e.g. mitigation of urban heat islands; reduction of cooling demand in summer; sequestration of atmospheric CO2; reduction of noise in buildings; and creation of additional spaces for social activities, horticulture, and for wildlife habitat, especially birds and pollinators. The large scale implementation of urban greening can thus lead to a more sustainable development of cities (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11252-012-0268-x).

How important are urban greening benefits?

Green Urban Infrastructure and Green Roofs

Bosco Verticale, Milan. Photo courtesy Stefano Boeri Architetti.

A recent study performed at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has proposed an innovative and simplified methodology to estimate such benefits in the European context, but that can be used as a basis to estimate analogous benefits in other geographic contexts (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221458182100001X).

The following equations (1-4) were achieved to estimate the benefits of greening. The achievable benefits depend on the soil thickness t (m), annual precipitation P (mm), annual potential evapotranspiration ET0 (mm), and annual actual evapotranspiration AET (mm). AET can be estimated from P and ET0 as described in Quaranta et al. (2021).

ΔText = [0.0007 ln (t) -0.0054] AET – [0.23 ln (t) + 1.7589] (1)

ΔTint = [2.10 ln (t) +9.13] ln (ET0) + [19.9 e-5.86t – 30] (2)

RR/P = [1.56 ln (t) + 19.267] P-0.55 (3)

CB = [0.74 ln (t) + 2.51] ln (ET0) – [4.081 ln (t) + 13.475] (4)

The above equations estimate the benefits assuming a herbaceous crop and 1 m2 of impervious surface. The estimated benefits are:

  • The difference in ground surface temperature ΔText, expressed in °C and averaged over summer months, between the soil vegetated surface and the surface prior to greening; this is an indicator of the reduction of the heat island effect.
  • The difference in temperature at the outer skin of the roof beneath the soil layer, ΔTint, expressed in °C and averaged over summer months, between the temperature computed for a grey surface and the temperature at the bottom of the soil in case of greening. The indicator ΔTint is proportional to the change in heat flow from the outside to the inside of a building through a soil-covered roof, hence to the energy required for cooling and to the reduction of the related CO2 emissions.
  • The average yearly % reduction of rainwater runoff RR, assuming runoff for the urban surface prior to greening equals the average yearly rainfall, P.
  • Yearly dry biomass production CB, expressed in kg m-2 y-1.

If these equations are applied to the European context, assuming 30 cm of soil thickness and the climatic data in each European map, Fig. 1. is obtained. From Fig. 1 it is clear that the countries with higher potential benefits pertaining to reduction of the heat island effect and energy required for cooling and to the reduction of the related CO2 emissions are those on the South and West, due to their higher evaporation rates, while Eastern Europe would experience the higher benefits of stormwater runoff reduction.

Green Urban Infrastructure and Green Roofs

Figure 1. Benefits of urban greening throughout Europe.

By applying the above meta-models to 35% of the impervious surfaces in the European context (roofs cover 35% of the European impervious surfaces), with a soil thickness of 30 cm and an herbaceous crop, it is possible to estimate a reasonable upper limit of each benefit.

It was estimated that ΔText ranged between 2.5 and 6 degrees, causing a reduction of sensible heat to the atmosphere, a driver of urban heat island effects. If 1% of the impervious surfaces in Europe would be greened, the reduction of heat flow to buildings could generate a cooling energy saving of about 2.6 TWh/y, which turns into energy cost savings whose ideal upper limit is estimated around 18.4 billion € (23.5% of the current cooling expenditure) when the 35% of impervious surfaces is greened. The sequestered carbon dioxide by biomass and summer cooling saving can be up to 55.8 Mtons per year (or about 1.2 % of the 4500 Mtons CO2 produced in Europe every year). The runoff reduction is in the order of 17.5%, for a global runoff reduction of about 10 km3/year, a sizable contribution in reducing the pollutant loads in water and wastewater distribution networks (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-88141-7).

Conclusions:

Green Urban Infrastructure and Green Roofs

Retail East Canary Wharf Extensive Greenroof, Late October, 2003. All photos by Linda S. Velazquez

Benefits of urban greening are several and can lead to a more sustainable development of cities and to a better and healthier life, supporting the fight against climate changes. Benefits are both private (reduction of cooling demand in summer and gardening) and public (heat island reduction and urban flood mitigation). Equations 1-4 can be applied in the European continent or in similar climatic contexts. In other contexts, they could be applied to reasonably estimate the order of the magnitude of results, or optimized with proper coefficients depending on the specific context.

~ Emanuele Quaranta and Alberto Pistocchi

Publisher’s Note: To see the complete Report, including additional economic implications and the massive monetization of combined benefits, read the June 9, 2021 Water, energy and climate benefits of urban greening throughout Europe under different climatic scenarios by Emanuele Quaranta, Chiara Donati & Alberto Pistocchi published in Scientific Reports.

Authors:

Green Urban Infrastructure and Green RoofsEmanuele Quaranta, PhD in Hydraulic Engineering, is a scientific officer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission with expertise in the water sector, in particular urban greening and hydropower. Dr. Quaranta is president of the Young Professional Network of the International Association for Hydro Environment and Research (Italian section).
emanuele.quaranta@ec.europa.eu / quarantaemanuele@yahoo.it

 

 

 


Green Urban Infrastructure and Green RoofsAlberto Pistocchi, PhD is an environmental engineer and land planner, and a scientific officer/project leader at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.
alberto.pistocchi@ec.europa.eu

Greenroofing Adventure Amidst COVID-19

Hello once again Green Roof Fans!

I think most of us GRPs hunker down for the winter. This year was looking like the typical winter until I got a phone call about a project I’d bid months back. It was a small residential green roof project that had a steep 5/12 slope in sunny Carpinteria, California.

Initially, I was excited, for several reasons: What Midwesterner wouldn’t jump at the chance to escape the winter in St. Louis for a few days in the sun? Also, because I’ve been trying to cultivate more business on the west coast since much of our business has been along the east coast.

Carpinteria California

Image: Kelly Luckett

East Vs. West

We at Green Roof Blocks have an established supply chain and reliable partners that have made bringing materials into Manhattan, for example, routine. The west coast, however, has been more of a challenge. One primary impediment is the tight agricultural controls California enforces at the border – the plant material has to be sourced in California.

We have been using Sempergreen almost exclusively for our sedum mats, but they are located in Virginia and shipping to the west coast is cost prohibitive. Oscar Warmerdam, President of Sempergreen USA, put me in touch with the folks at Rana Creek in Carmel, near San Francisco. It took some coordination selecting the plant species and it took about 3 months for them to produce the 400 square feet of sedum tiles required for this project, to be planted on top of our newly redesigned Green Paks.

Each 24” x 24” Green Pak is a completely self-contained module made of a long-lasting, unique knitted high density polyethylene. The top face is made of biodegradable burlap, which decomposes into nutrients.

Route of the Green Paks

The empty Green Paks are shipped from China and stored at our east coast blender, McEnroe Organic Farms in Millerton, New York. By the time we got the Paks shipped to our Midwest blender, Oldcastle Landscape Supply, and got the soil blended and the Paks filled to four inches thick with our proprietary growth media, the coronavirus pandemic was starting to really spool up.

Carpinteria California

Loading the filled Green Paks for my trek. Image: Kelly Luckett

In mid March I rented a Penske truck and set out west with the filled Paks for California. My wife sent me off with surgical gloves, hand sanitizer, and a canister of disinfectant wipes. She also sent me with enough food for a week. I wiped down every gas pump I used all the way to California. I touched nothing. I ate my own food, and I wiped down every surface I touched in each of the hotel rooms I stayed in.

The first day of the drive was uneventful. I made it to Denver and stopped for the night. The next morning, I started up the mountain.

Carpinteria California

The rain was just beginning to fall. Image: Kelly Luckett

As I drove higher up the mountain, the rain turned to sleet, then to snow. There were flashing signs about traction laws and information signs displaying a message stating chain laws were being enforced, and signs about chain stations ahead. I thought to myself I’d better stop at the chain station and buy some chains.

To my chagrin, I learned they don’t sell snow chains at the chain station! For those of you like me, who haven’t driven through the pass in the winter, the chain station is a widened portion of the shoulder of the road where motorists can pull off of the road and install snow chains.

The snow was really starting to pile up and it was difficult to steer so I pulled off the road into the chain station and pulled up behind a few trucks. The drivers were out installing snow chains on their drive tires. I got out and went to talk to one. He warned me that the police would fine me $1500 for not having snow chains. I eased my way to the next exit, turned around, and headed back to Denver. I found an AutoZone and purchased a couple of sets of snow chains.

Carpinteria California

Denver road on March 17, 2020. Image: Yahoo Finance

The Green Roof Guy has never laid eyes on a snow chain before, so I was clueless how they went on. I paid the kids at AutoZone $20 to take a shot at putting them on for me. They got one set on the outside tires of the tandem axle tires and I set out. As I pulled onto the on ramp and started back onto highway 70, I heard the driver side chain smacking the truck.

By the time I pulled over, the passenger side broke too. There was about three inches of slush on the ground and water was rushing down the on ramp. The chain was wrapped around the axle and stuck between the tandem wheels. I struggled with it for a while squatting, attempting to stay on my feet. After about fifteen minutes of this I had to admit defeat and lie down in the flowing water. From this angle I was able to see that the chain was hooked on the valve stem and all the pulling in the world would not have freed it.

I managed to get it freed and pulled the mangled chain out. Standing there, soaking wet and freezing, I had to make a decision: I decided to take my chances without snow chains.

I got in the truck, cranked up the heat and continued up the mountain. By now the snowplows were running and I just took it slow and easy. I wanted to get off the road around 10:00 pm, but the snow squalls were so heavy at times I simply could not see out of the windshield. I was driving 10 MPH keeping the truck on the road by looking out the side window through which I could see the road markers along the side of the highway. That went on for about thirty white knuckling minutes. When finally, I got to the next exit, I pulled off and got a hotel room. I wondered if I had made the right call as the snow had slowed a bit as I was pulling into the hotel parking lot.

I think most of us GRPs hunker down for the winter. This year was looking like the typical winter until I got a phone call about a project I’d bid months back. What Midwesterner wouldn’t jump at the chance to escape the winter in St. Louis for a few days in the sun?

Once settled in the room I sipped a beer and watched out the window as it started picking up again. Before long, it was a total white out. I smiled and arranged my wet shoes on the heater hoping they’d dry by morning. I set out early, crossed into California and made it to Rana Creek around 10:30 the next morning. The young worker loaded two pallets of sedum tiles on my truck and I headed south for Carpinteria. I got checked in the Best Western in the charming little beach community. The gentleman at the front desk told me I was one of six guests in the entire hotel. Social distancing wouldn’t be a problem.

I needed a few things for the install, so I walked to the lumber yard. There were a few people out but most of the stores were closed. A few restaurants were selling takeout and the gas station was open, but the shelves were almost bare. I was hoping to buy some sodas. Then I remembered the vending machines in the hotel. I scored some ones from the front desk and raided the vending for Diet Dr Peppers, Pop Tarts, and a Snickers bar.

The trip had taken a day longer than I expected. I had to reschedule the crew several times, and it was now Saturday afternoon. I spoke with the crew foreman about possibly installing the green roof on Sunday, but the crew wished to spend Sunday during these troubling times with their families. I completely understood. Truth be told, I was beat up from the drive and a down day sounded pretty good. It was going to feel good to sleep in.

I walked to the job where I found the homeowners sheltering in place. This is their vacation home and when the California Governor put the lock down on, they were stuck. I was a little uneasy about going ahead with the install as I’m fairly certain green roof installations are not “essential services.” However, I drove this stuff across the country and I wanted to go home, so I was considering it essential.

Carpinteria California

Image: Kelly Luckett

I met the crew at 8:30 am on Monday the next day, and they were all happy to have work and to get out of the house. I cut the first course of drain core with root barrier and showed them how to place the Green Paks, then showed them how to place the sedum tiles on top. They picked it up quickly and asked me to let them do it. I got out of their way and watched from the ground.

By noon, the green roof was finished, the grounds were immaculate, and the truck was swept clean and ready to return. I didn’t want them to have to deal with a check from St. Louis, so I brought them cash. They were very appreciative, as was I for their help. We bumped elbows, and I returned to my hotel, schlepping all of my belongings with me. The Penske truck rental was across the street; I turned the truck in and headed for one more hotel stay by LAX.

Final Thoughts

Carpinteria California

Images: ktsimage/iStock, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, via Fast Company

I settled in my room to reflect on the week. I knew when I started out it was going to be a difficult endeavor. The distance, the roof slope, the pandemic; none were small hurdles. I finished most of my food and polished off the beer I’d brought.

The customer was ecstatic with the job, I now had established a relationship with a west coast sedum mat producer, and I had a trained crew in LA. It was a good feeling, but I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I still had to get home.

Carpinteria California

Images: Kelly Luckett

Carpinteria California

The finished green roof project, masks and all, in Carpinteria, California. Image: Kelly Luckett

Years ago, I needed a mask for some dusty work I was doing. I remember standing at Lowe’s looking at the options and selecting the sturdier looking face mask. I’m not even sure why I still have it. Turns out, it is one of the coveted N95 face masks.

I woke early the next morning, donned my mask and rubber gloves, and got my two bags loaded in the hotel’s airport shuttle. I kept my distance from everyone. I wiped down the chair at the gate and the entire row in the plane. My friend helped my wife get my car to the airport so no one had to come in contact with me to get me home from the airport.

Carpinteria California

Safety measures for a Green Roof Adventure amidst a global pandemic. Images: Kelly Luckett

Carpinteria California

I drove home where my wife had the basement ready for my 14 day quarantine period. I monitored my temperature for the next two weeks. I never got any symptoms. I got to rejoin my wife in the house just over a week ago where, like you all, we’ll be sheltering in place until we all get past this.

From my family to yours, Green Roof Fans, stay home and stay well.

~ Kelly Luckett, GRP, LEED AP, The Green Roof Guy

Carpinteria California

Hailing from Lake Saint Louis, MO, Kelly Luckett, GRP, LEED AP has nearly two decades in the green roof industry which followed Kelly’s thirty years in the roofing industry. His work includes: developing the Green Roof Blocks product line with products in service on over 125 green roof projects; providing the initial funding to establish the G.R.E.E.N. Green Roof Research Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; co-authoring minimum design standards for green roofs within the International Building Code; authoring Green Roof Construction and Maintenance (GreenSource Books) (McGraw-Hill’s Greensource) 2009; serving on committees to develop and beta test the Green Roofs for Healthy Cities’ Green Roof Professional accreditation testing program; and working as an instructor with the NRCA University educating designers and contractors about green roof design and construction.

Kelly designed, patented, and introduced the Green Wall Blocks vegetated retaining wall system. Kelly has been a contributing editor on Greenroofs.com (2005); he is The Green Roof Guy who shares his travels attending ASTM, GRHC and other roofing and greenroof related organization meetings. In 2010, Kelly received the Green Roofs for Healthy Cities Civic Award of Excellence.

Kelly Luckett’s latest book is a novel entitled Death and Humanity – Neck and Neck Down the Stretch: The Race Against Pandemic (Kindle Edition), 2020 available from Amazon.

Contact Kelly at: kelly@greenroofblocks.com

It’s Finally Here: Greenroofs.com Announces New Website Redesign!

www.greenroofs.com

Alpharetta, GA, USA. – (November 7, 2018) – Greenroofs.com is a dynamic interactive website, online media company, vibrant social network, and comprehensive resource Connecting the Planet + Living Architecture promoting People, Projects & Solutions, and is excited to announce the release of our new website redesign.

Beautiful, bold graphics herald the new look and feel of the website.  With easy navigation, the engaging new layout and creative design really pops.  Readers will enjoy a fresh, clean reading experience.  Advertisers will appreciate enhanced functionality to increase worldwide visibility and further the green infrastructure industry.

Platform:

Our entire website now sits atop the most popular open source Content Management System (CMS) in the world, WordPress. Used by approximately 75 million websites, WordPress is free to install, deploy, and upgrade. Thousands of plugins and templates power a flexible and simple interface, which reduces development costs and deployment time.

Content:

Our newly redesign Homepage provides ease of navigation and the ability to read the latest posts first. All posts now have the ability to be shared across multiple social media sites.

Greenroofs.com is an approved Google, Apple & Bing News Publisher and as such, all our posts show up on all the search engines results like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., who capture this content for use in all their services. In addition, this content is also published to all our social media sites: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr and our monthly Newsletter.

Google Analytics:

We are implementing Google Analytics in full mode now.

Google Analytics allow us monitor the effectiveness of our online marketing strategies, onsite content, user experience, and device functionality. All these statistics show us what is working well, and more importantly, what isn’t. Once we identify issues that our site may have, we can immediately create a solution. Google Analytics allows us the information needed to improve our website, and make it the best it can be.

Projects:

The Projects Database landing page is the second most visited page of our website, after the Homepage. Our goal here is to easily display our comprehensive body of global projects searchable by type, date of completion, geographic location, designer, manufacturer, etc.

The new layout highlights the last 12 Featured Projects along with very a powerful Advanced Search capability.


www.greenroofs.com/projects/

Directory:

Use our online Directory to locate and source green roof professionals and businesses in your area to help you on your next project. You can search for companies, products, services,and also narrow your search using specific keywords.

The new layout depicts company profiles with logos, displayed alphabetically by Directory levels (Sponsor, Elite, Premium, and Standard).

www.greenroofs.com/directory/

Our Press Releases is a feature provided to all companies currently listed in the Greenroofs.com Directory. These releases are created as a separate page and then published as original content to the web as part of the news on our website.

“We at Greenroofs.com are extremely grateful for the financial assistance of a LEAf grant and proud of the professional endorsement from our colleague to continue our efforts in promote living architecture.”~
Linda S. Velázquez
ASLA, LEED AP, GRP, Founder & Publisher of Greenroofs.com

Funding from LEAf

The new Greenroofs.com website is made possible with the generous support from the Legacy Emilio Ambasz Foundation (LEAf). Founded by pioneering green architect Emilio Ambasz, the foundation’s main purpose is to support architects who merit being called artists as well as those building ideas which may greatly improve domestic and urban life.

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About Greenroofs.com:
Established in 1999, Greenroofs.com is an interactive website, online media company, vibrant social network, and the most comprehensive online resource for greenroofs, greenwalls, and related fields promoting best practices in sustainability. Greenroofs.com’s Mission is as a catalyst for the growing green architecture industry and Earth’s connection to emerging trends of living architecture and nature-based infrastructure practices. We live in a blue-green world and represent an environmentally aware industry who protects our environment utilizing vegetated building envelope practices providing smart building solutions to our critical world issues of climate change, urban heat islands, renewable energies, stormwater management, CSO’s, water conservation, water & air pollution, flooding, wildlife habitat, urban greenspace, food security – and much more.

Greenroofs.com is the largest platform for greenroof and greenwall news online and is where diverse professionals find global projects in the international Greenroofs.com Projects Database and products and services in the Greenroofs.com Directory for their own projects.  

Press Contact:
Aramis M. Velázquez | CEO
Greenroofs.com, LLC.
Alpharetta, Georgia 30005
770-772-7334
aramis@greenroofs.com