Biophilic design (design features that reconnect people with nature) help reduce stress in the workplace & home. In an ideal world every interior & flat rooftop will have either a green wall or green roof to compensate for the lack of contact with nature that is a reality for many urban dwellers in 2020.
Such amenities are in line with scientific and psychological theories about humans’ intrinsic need for exposure to natural environments — a disposition known as biophilia.
Rain can fall through a cut-out in the concave roof of this London house extension by Tonkin Liu, animating a shallow pool of water beneath.
The lobby and main entrance of the St. Charles Methodist Church in St. Charles, Missouri looks out over a small flat roof area, below. Like many white membrane roof owners, they quickly learned how fast they can get ugly.
As this roof is highly visible to every visitor, they turned to Green Roof Blocks to it spruce up last summer 2019.
EXAMPLE: The unused rooftops of Melbourne’s buildings are a massively underutilised resource that has the potential to create new green space in the central city that is bigger than Royal Park.
MVRDV has revealed a renovation scheme for the Tripolis office complex in Amsterdam, originally designed by Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck. Entitled Tripolis Park, the proposal that will accommodate the offices of Uber, will also enlarge part of the existing space, add an office block and a new park.
Rooftops covered with grass, vegetable gardens and lush foliage are now a common sight in many cities around the world. More and more private companies and city authorities are investing in green roofs, drawn to their wide-ranging benefits which include savings on energy costs, mitigating the risk from floods, creating habitats for urban wildlife, tackling air pollution and urban heat and even producing food.
Sea levels are rising around the world, but as they rise, Bangkok is sinking. The low-lying megacity, built on marshland, is also now so covered in concrete that during heavy rains—the type of storms that are becoming more common because of climate change—streets can quickly flood.
Queensland’s largest green wall has recently been unveiled as part of a $100 million-plus glass-fronted building at Brisbane’s Breakfast Creek Lifestyle Precinct.
