| | In the Year 2020
By Ralph Velasquez, Sustainable Roofing Technologies Editor
August 23, 2009 Sustainable Roofing Column For all of those who read my New Year’s article, all my resolutions have been broken, so I have decided to look forward to a new year, the year 2020 in fact. I have chosen 2020 because all my grandchildren that have been born to date will be either in college or about ready to enter college and I will have reached the normal retirement age of 65. What will their sustainable future look like and mine in retirement? Let’s take a stab at it together.  | Dongtan, China: Current. Arup is designing energy from wind, solar, and bio-fuel to be standard along with recycled city waste. Clean technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells will power public transport. A network of cycle and footpaths will help the city achieve close to zero vehicle emissions. Source: 2008 Top 10 Hot Design Trends. |
First, vegetative roofs will be a normal way to roof or re-roof a building. The current controversies about fire and wind uplift will have long since been resolved, going the way of Europe back in the late twentieth century. We are designing vegetative roofs to be very specific in their functional attributes. 
| House of the Future: Conceptual. In April, 2009, The Wall Street Journal asked four architects to design an energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable house without regard to cost, technology, aesthetics or the way we are used to living. The idea was not to dream up anything impossible or unlikely. Instead, they were asked to think of what technology might make possible in the next few decades. This is William McDonough + Partners entry. |
Costs have dropped significantly due to the old American market forces of competition and innovation. Every component in the design is either recycled or highly renewable and the design from the inception has been created to be deconstructed after its design life is complete and reused.  | Zorlu Ecocity: Current, Istanbul, Turkey. The mixed-use development project by Llewelyn Davies Yeang has been planned as a ‘city within a city’ and adheres to the original planning strategies of Istanbul of relieving the pressure on the city’s core by developing more urban centers in the entire Marma region. Office towers, residential towers, apartments, two hotels and resort-like elderly units cover a three-storey retail complex. The 14 towers will range from 8 to 26 stories, and the green city would also have a seven-story deep basement, providing space for six thousand cars. Source: Greenroofs.com 2009 Top 10 Hot Design Trends. |
Perhaps we have vegetative roofs that come in completely inclusive rolls of waterproofing, soil and plants, you just apply the entire assembly, water and let it grow. Will we be doing vegetative roofs using hydroponics and no growing media of any type will be needed. Perhaps we spray on a slurry mix of waterproofing, soil and plants. By the way, the vegetative roof extends to the walls both on the roof and on the exterior shell of the building, as we want the entire building structure to breathe in that nasty carbon and breath out fresh life giving oxygen. We want to clean the air, cool down our cities, save more of the ever increasing costly energy and save water, that is getting even more valuable then the energy we consume in an increasing fashion. 
|  | The ECO Casino: 2007, Nevada AIA Design Awards. Steelman Partners says it’s “A building that's both a fantasy attraction and a structure sensitive as an efficient green energy generating machine.” Source: 2009 Top 10 Hot Design Trends. |
Speaking of energy, we have come a long way with our ability to harness the sun, wind and other natural forces of energy in the built environment. Since we finally figured out how to easily capture the suns rays at a molecular level, we now incorporate it everyday into paints, coatings and films. The projections that are still on our roofs, now at least can be painted with solar energizing paint and produce electricity. We capture solar rays through our day lighting building components, we have moved solar capture into our building skins and we have even figured out how to harness wind energy in the eco-skeleton of the building frame itself. We just don’t design buildings to resist wind pressures, how stupid was that? We now design wind to be captured by the framing of the building and the entire building is a generator. Of course, now that we have figured out how to use fuel cells to store the solar energy effectively and relatively inexpensively, we can now use it at night. Speaking of nighttime, the newly perfected technology that captures light during the night hours, similar to the way night vision goggles work, has really improved total energy capture over a 24 hour time period.  | 'Anti Smog: An Innovation Centre in Sustainable Development': Prototype, Paris, France. Central to the design is the “Solar Drop” an elliptical structure. The exterior is fitted with 250 square meters of solar photovoltaic panels and coated in titanium dioxide (TiO2). The PV system produces on-site electrical energy while the TiO2 coating works with ultraviolet radiation to interact with particulates in the air, break down organics and reduce air born pollutants and contaminants. Source: 2008 Top 10 Hot Design Trends. |
Producing so much of our own energy has really had an impact on so many economic, social and political factors in our society; it is hard to recount them all. We have even improved our national security because we now import so much less oil from the unstable Middle East. We have improved our national debt through the increase of some many “green jobs” that came as a result of the new technology and the reduction of our national debt. Through the savings of energy we have had more money to deal with other things such as health care, social security, Medicare and a host of other things that needed some real work. Our military has become less dependant on fuels such as oil, gasoline and coal to provide the energy needs of our soldiers and their bases. Proven solar technologies such as dye sensitive solar have allowed new advances in how to move an armed force with less supply lines, their costs and diminish their vulnerability to disruption from our enemies. Everything from homes to cars to, well you name it, seems to have been affected by these new solar technologies.  | New York Tower at One Madison Avenue: Current/Conceptual, New York, NY. Daniel Libeskind designed a 54-story apartment building featuring a series of sky gardens cut out from its façade providing green space and terraced balconies. Source: 2009 Top 10 Hot Design Trends. |
Other green technologies such as bio-based and highly renewable materials are now being regularly used in vegetative roofs. Agricultural based, highly reflective roof coatings, using non-edible portions of agricultural materials have replaced a large portion of our oil based roofing materials. This again has impacted how much oil we import and has so many of the same impacts already discussed with solar. Since we are growing more plant based materials, our carbon footprint is reducing, in fact with the advent of some many clean energy sources and more plant material being used, our carbon clock is rapidly spinning backward. Also, since more materials are available locally, less energy is used and less carbon is created in moving stuff around the country.  | The “Spinach Home” Concept Home: Concept/Current. The winning entry in the 2008 Cradle to Cradle Home International Design Competition has a photosynthetic, phototropic spinach skin surface and a vegetated roof system that filters storm water. A vertical core with super-conductive photosynthetic plasma that generates 200% more voltage than ordinary solar cells. The spinach protein shell of the house grows over time, generating enough electricity to power the neighbors' homes, too.
Source: 2008 Top 10 Hot Design Trends. |
On the manufacturing side of the equation, we are using less water, recapturing so much of what we use to waste, saving money, energy and reducing carbon. Capturing storm water from roofs and buildings, condensate water from HVAC units, grey and black water from building use, has opened up whole new industries and career opportunities for my grandchildren’s generation. We have learned how to better use waste from our manufacturing operations, many burning this as bio-fuels, while others are recycling so much of what we use to throw away that new landfills rarely need to be opened.  | Project Green: Current, Austin, TX. This urban, mixed-use development uses a comprehensive approach to sustainability. In addition to incorporating usual green components like solar panels and wind turbines, it also features greenroofs, above and below grade treatment cisterns, and most notably, vegetated street treatment swales. These swales are loaded with plant material that cleans storm water as it is filtered through. The project aims to "Minimize the impact on water resources, including storm, potable, and waste water discharge, through stormwater management and storage, fixture efficiencies, grey water systems for flushing and irrigation -- augmented by sewer mining which processes sewer discharge for grey water uses and creates a net reduction in potable demand. Source: 2009 Top 10 Hot Design Trends. |
While I could go on with one new technology and sustainable approach after another, suffice to say, my grandchildren’s sustainable future is looking so much brighter, than our own less than illustrious past. Glad we began to wake up to what we needed to change when we did or we might never had seen the new economy blossom from 2010-2020 the way it did. It’s so easy to see with hindsight but for those back in 2009 it was as clear as mud. I’m glad we were not deterred with the many challenges with energy, water or carbon and pressed forward with the opportunities that were right in front of us. We made mistakes along the way but what a real mistake it would have been if we had not persevered, pushing the envelope of sustainable technologies.  | Vertical Farm: Conceptual, The World. The concept for 30-story towers that could feed thousands of people has captured the imagination of international architects and city planners. In 1999, Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, created the concept with 82 graduate students in his class on medical ecology - the study of how the environment and human health interact. “He says that the skyscrapers could protect a city's food supply from floods and droughts, and from pathogens that attack crops.” Source: 2009 Top 10 Hot Design Trends. |
As I think about retirement in 2020, I think I just might recycle something even more valuable then building components…....Me! Here is to refiring, not retiring in 2020! Watch out Tristen, Kameron and Taylor, your grandpa is not done yet. I hope you see the world we are turning over to you as a work in progress and you will do an even better job than what we started. Who knows what your generation will come up with, but whatever it is, let’s git er done!
Grandpa  | Lilypad, a zero emission ecopolis for climate refugees: The World, Conceptual. By Vincent Callebaut, it’s a completely self-sufficient floating city intended to provide shelter for future climate change refugees. Through a number of technologies (solar, wind, tidal, biomass), the project’s vision it to not only produce its own energy, but be able to process CO2 in the atmosphere and absorb it into its titanium dioxide skin. Pushing the envelope of sustainable technologies for our children and grandchildren!
Source: 2009 Top 10 Hot Design Trends. |
Ralph Velasquez
Director, Sustainable Technologies Group
Tremco, Inc.
Contact Ralph at: phone (VM) 877.510.2681, SustainableRoofingEditor@greenroofs.com or rvelasquez@tremcoinc.com.
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