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The leads in those races have never flipped since polls closed Tuesday night. Denver city officials, including Mayor Michael Hancock, already were treating the Green Roof Initiative as though it would pass, given its growing lead with every release of results. — Denver Post
Jon Murray and Kieran Nicholson report the final, unofficial, results released by the Denver Elections Division. BLUF Denver voters passed the Green Roof Initiative and Mayor Hancock and the city are committing to "how best to implement it within the laws and property rights that people have, and... View full entry
Why place individual solar panels on top of a pre-existing roof when you could just build an entire roof with solar technology integrated into it? Elon Musk, CEO of the financially underperforming Solar City and Tesla, sees it as an obvious solution. According to CNNMoney, he said that "If your... View full entry
That is the question that plagues all these green towers. Will they really ever look like they do on the billboards? The question is important because what this outbreak of green means is that architects and developers are hiding ugly, ill-considered buildings behind curtains of foliage and if the green doesn’t grow, all we’re left with is the dumb, naked towers, blank and expressionless with the fig leaf of a few, well, fig leaves for cover. — ft.com
Related on Archinect:France Mandates "Green Roofs" for all new buildingsBoeri Studio's Bosco Verticale in Milan makes the forest tower fantasy a realitySeeing (Too Much) Green: Reality Cues' Eco-Porn Competition"Eco-Gentrification," or the social ramifications of "urban greening" View full entry
A South Bay developer is reimagining an outdated Cupertino mall by building the world’s largest green roof on top of it.
The Vallco Shopping Mall, bought by Sand Hill Property Company for $316 million last year, is destined to become a 30-acre elevated public park that will connect shops to offices, trails and vineyards.
The $3 billion design was inspired by “starchitect” Rafael Viñoly, who is working alongside Olin Landscape Architects to replace most [of] the Valleco Shopping Mall...
— CBS
Paris wants to consume 25% less energy and emit 25% less emissions by 2020. Paris is also the site of this year’s major United Nations conference on climate change. While France currently gets about 80% of its electricity from nuclear energy, and has lagged behind other European countries like Germany and Denmark in developing green technologies, it certainly seems to have some momentum headed into the important November conference. — Quartz
It's not literally every single building in France. The approved law only requires the rooftops of new buildings in commercial areas to be fully or partially covered with either solar panels or plants.Related:A New Use for the Eiffel TowerStay comfortable during climate change in a rowhouseFARM-X... View full entry
As fossil fuels become more expensive and the number of urban dwellers continues to rise, urban farming will help feed the population without increasing the cost and pollution of food transport. [...]
The rise in rooftop farming isn't limited to commercial operations. "Rooftop farming and gardening has become extremely diverse, and in that sense a more 'normal' presence in cities"
— news.nationalgeographic.com
If green roofs can be seen, they are a constraint for architectural design. Either you acknowledge them or they become an afterthought. — toskovic.com
I attempt to disassemble issues in advocating green roofs. View full entry
Whole Foods is teaming up with rooftop garden company Gotham Greens for its next New York location. When the lettuce only has to come down a staircase from the roof, that’s about as local as you can get. — fastcoexist.com
"They felt some of those things were too flashy and not in keeping with the kind of the culture of Facebook, so they asked us to make it more anonymous. Frank (Gehry) was quite willing to tone down some of the expression of architecture in the building." — gawker.com
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden, entering its second century, is hardly a novice at branding, but at the new Visitor Center it is exercised with comprehensive aplomb. … the green roof is no small engineering feat. With a pitch of up to 27 degrees, it requires complicated networks of special soils held in place with cleats and geo-nets involving drip irrigation systems woven into capillary fabrics, and other impressive techniques with specialized vocabularies known only to au courant gardeners… — Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal embraces eco-technical gardening while finding a way to point out traditional marriage. View full entry
The inside of the greenhouse will be anything but ordinary. Four-metre-high stacks of growing trays on motorized conveyors will ferry plants up, down and around for watering, to capture the sun’s rays and then move them into position for an easy harvest.
The array will produce about the same amount of produce as 6.4 hectares (16 acres) of California fields, according to Christopher Ng, chief operating officer of Valcent.
— vancouversun.com
Renzo Piano recently unveiled plans for a new waterfront cultural center and urban park in Athens that includes a massive opera house and a library that is directly connected to the park by a sloping green roof. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center will also incorporate several sustainable technologies with the hope of attaining LEED Platinum certification. — Inhabitat
When the Vancouver Convention Centre was first completed we were totally blown away by its gorgeous (and huge!) green roof as well as its many green features. So we weren't surprised when the convention centre was recently recognized by the AIA landing its place among the Committee On The Environment's (COTE) Top Ten Green Projects. — Inhabitat
The gorgeous green-roofed Vancouver Convention Centre was just recognized by the AIA as being one of this year's Top 10 Green Projects. View full entry