Green Roofs on Grey Walls: Killing 3 Birds with 1 Stone

            The reason I was initially attracted to a green roof was simply because a green roof is green.  We were looking for a way to promote greenness within our company’s community—a way to make a statement about our commitment to the environment.  My biggest memory of the factory was that it was SO GREY.  What better way to bring in a green statement than to actually SHOW people what we meant?  I had a vision of these mini-oases—amidst a sea of grey factory blocks, roofs that were covered in lush vegetation.  This is where my fascination with green roofs, and now living walls, began.  It came about with a simple image—grey versus green.

            As I did my research I realized that when you put in a green roof or a vertical garden, it really becomes green and grey, working together.  This was not just another playground—these things actually work.  To make it clear, a green roof is a roof that is covered with vegetation and which grows naturally due to the addition of soil or some type of other growing medium.  A living wall, or a vertical garden, is the exact same thing but built against a wall.  These structures are not only beautiful, they are ecologically beneficial.  They insulate buildings, reduce the urban heat island effect, filter pollutants from the air, act as a haven for biodiversity…  They help protect the building while enhancing the natural environment, and, very importantly, they look pretty.  Yay!  

            All of a sudden, I realized that green roofs and walls were turning up everywhere.  Patrick Blanc, probably the world’s most glamorous builder of such projects, did walls for Stella McCartney’s SS08 show, the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, and Marc Newson’s Qantas first class lounges in Australia.  More locally Sevva, in Hong Kong, boasts a green wall, and HSBC has just launched a Green credit card to fund the building of such roofs on top of schools.  Here in China alone we have over 500,000 square meters of green roofs (ok, maybe not a lot given the total square-meterage of rooftops in China, but still).  Not bad, huh?  If nothing else, this is a formidable beginning.

            Still, look out your window—what do you see?  If you are lucky, you probably have a view of a set of immense skyscrapers, all steel and glass, reaching towards the skies…  If you are unlucky, you might see blocks of concrete—buildings that maximize plot-land ratio and very little else…

            Think about this for a second—how narcissistic and economical have we become?  While I’d still rather live next to Bergdorf’s than to Lake Wononscopomuc, it’s rather depressing thatall around us is a built environment that either professes our mastery over nature or our desire to want and have more.  Other than in the dredges of bars and nightclubs, where are we supposed to play?  And, more pressingly, where are we supposed to dream??

The issue of how we are going to live in the future is central to the green movement.  We ask this question not only insofar as how are we going to sustain our lifestyle, but furthermore as a vital or possibly humanistic critique or opportunity.  It is just as the term “危机”purports—the time of danger is also a time of opportunity.  And thus the question really is given the situation, what do we want to change? Or, given the need to change, what more can we do to make life better as well as just sustainable?  

            Look, I’m a city girl, through and through.  When I was little, I even found sand dirty and refused to go to the beach.  The idea of living more than ten minutes away from everything basically scares me.  There is no way I could give up city life.  No way.  But we live in a time where we have options—a time where so long as we can conceive of it, it can happen.  And yet we still treat life like a zero-sum game—if it’s not mine, it’s yours, or, if it’s not this way, then it has to be another…

            The green movement and, if I might say, life in general is now about finding new solutions that fit into and improve upon our lives as we (want to) live them.  The world today is one where anything is possible.  For me, the green roof or living wall is a symbol of exactly this.  It is a green “technology,” an urban oasis, and an aesthetic statement.  It has the power to reconfigure the way we live while not requiring us to change anything in our way of life. It’s Shrek, Fritz Lang, and Rousseau’s Reveries all in one.  Who said we can’t have our cake and eat it too?