Living Architecture Monitor - Green Roofs for Healthy Cities

ONTHEROOFWITH…
Q: The Germans have a wonderful sense of stewardship for nature
and, indeed, created the green roof concept in the first place.
Do you feel your heritage has influenced your work?
A: Well, when I was 15, we landed in New York from Germany in
1939, before the war, because my mother thought it was for us. A
year and a half later, she came down from breakfast one day and
said to me and my sister, ‘This place is too materialistic for you girls
— all you are thinking about is sweaters and skirts. When you come
new to a country you have to till the soil.’ She then whisked us in
our wooden-bodied Ford Station wagon up to northern New Hampshire
and that’s where I grew up. She was trained as a horticulturalist
and created a Victory Garden to grow vegetables during the war
and so, that’s how I grew up.
Q: You have practiced “living architecture” before the term even
existed — what does the term mean to you now?
A: Living architecture means that the building is healthy and the land
is healthy and that you are contributing to the biomass of the city,
namely to make the air cleaner. I feel that if you have chosen the
profession of landscape architecture, you have a duty to listen to what
the times bring. It’s not what I was taught at Harvard way back when,
necessarily, but all about what we must make of the land today. I’ve
always looked to the future.
Q: How has landscape architecture profession changed since you
established your own practice in 1953?
A: Well, the industry was non-existent then. You hoped for the best,
that the building wouldn’t fall down! But I was already at Harvard realizing
I could not work in a vacuum — that I would have to work in collaboration
with architects.
Q: Early in your career, did you ever imagine you would ever see the
mainstreaming of green roofs as is happening now?
A: Well, I had hoped it would happen. The municipal bylaws and the
building bylaws of every city must include green roofs. We have not
reached this goal yet.
MOSHESAFDIE’SVANCOUVERPUBLICLIBRARY
Q: You are retrofitting one of your most important and noted
projects, Vancouver’s Robson Square — what is being done and why?
A: Well, after 35 years it was time. In 1976, the waterproofing membrane,
or EPDM, was guaranteed for 20 years, and it lasted for 35
years. So that had to be renewed, but on top of that, the province of
British Columbia demanded seismic upgrading for the whole building,
and so this is being done at present and with it, came an in-depth
analysis of the plant materials which were possible to keep. We lifted
out several 8,000-pound Japanese Maple Trees among others, took
them to a nursery and brought them back last spring and then planted
them in exactly the same location as before.
Q: What were some of the challenges you encountered with your
design of the green roof on Vancouver’s Library Square Building?
A: I don’t work with soils, so I knew already in 1976 I knew that I could
only have a lightweight growing medium for the roofs for the Robson
Square installation. So for the Library Square, I researched at great
length how could I get a lightweight growing media and I came upon
the idea to collect all the vegetable food waste from the restaurants in
Vancouver and have them process it into compost. The final mix is
one-third compost from vegetable food waste, one-third pumice and
one-third sand: it’s called the Library mix — and we will use it at Robson
Square again, so the challenge was to talk the owners into allowing
us to use this lightweight material.
“I feel that if you have chosen the profession
of landscape architecture you have a duty to
listen to what the times bring...I’ve always
looked to the future.”