Bookmark: GreenGrid Rooftop Garden System
This is a bookmark I really drug out deep from inside my browser. The website is for a modular roof garden system created by two companies - neither of which tell you much about themselves on their websites except for all the things they are “dedicated” to. From contact information, it appears they are based in Pennsylvania. I couldn’t tell you what I was doing when I found this website, which is really is one of the beautiful things about the Internet.
I think that the idea of having a roof top garden is a fantastic one. Living in Honolulu, where space is so precious, I am surprised not to see more of these. Browsing through some of the projects that have used this system, it strikes me that so many of the installations are ONLY for energy savings or storm water management. Quite a few are ONLY for aesthetics from office windows. It is great that having plants on a building infer such great economic benefits that it is done only for these reasons.
Yet, as much as this seems all good and well, the roof should be a place for people too! Perhaps my experiences here (and an utter lack of open space) lead me to over-anticipate the importance of open space for people’s use for the country as a whole. Still, to me the roof of a building should be the top floor and it should be the best floor - where one can escape the climate controlled can they are working in and stand up, walk, run for a while. Especially here where the weather is so consistent, I can image a whole series of parks and cafes on the roofs of major retail centers. I would much rather sit at a cafe on the roof of a building where the view is potentially 360 degrees than to sit at a cafe crammed on a sidewalk next to a road choked with mopeds and cars sporting obnoxious and noxious exhaust systems.
The GreenGrid system seems to focus a lot on saving weight, which is a major technical challenge needed for rooftop gardens to not collapse the building, and thus become more widespread. Not surprisingly, but not unconvincingly, they compare their product quite favorably with a custom designed system in almost every respect, including weight. Looking at how many of the examples are laid out though shows that the systems doesn’t really hide the fact it is modular. I think the appeal for people space is greatly diminished because of this “cheap” feel. It seems to me that it would be an effective synthesis to combine one or two custom defining elements, then accomplish the rest with a GreenGrid. In a sense this could be an environmentally minded and everyday installation analogous to some of the rather fancy gardens created from modular media (often just pots) indoors for home and garden shows.
And a small annoyance, but why in the world does the marketers of GreenGrid and, it seems, the majority of websites devoted to rooftop gardens have such tiny, narrow field of view photos? The photos above aren’t even resized. Even Wikipedia has poor selection - best being an image of a hotel roof top garden, the worst even smaller than the GreenGrid photos. Not much of a sales pitch.