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Oh Mayor Daley, you're so forward thinking! Check you out in that fancy schmancy National Geographic article, all up in the environment. They even say you’re "leading by example." That's certainly one way to describe the City administration.
Oh, we're bitter, cynical folk here. Mayor Daley told NG that
I thought, with all the flat roofs in Chicago, you could reclaim thousands of acres for the environment and also help buildings with heating and cooling and controlling rainwater going into the sewer system.
Well done, sir. The article is about Chicago's green roof initiative, wherein low-maintenance vegetation is planted on roofs. (There's one on top of City Hall.) The plants help absorb rainwater, which prevents urban drainage systems from being overwhelmed in the case of storms; help keep buildings cooler in the summer and a little warmer in the winter; and help "mitigate a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect." We got your urban heat island right here. Rawr.
Learn all about Chicago's Center for Green Technology and feel almost as crunchy granola as Mayor Daley. Or read Chicago magazine's riveting story on jam bands in December's issue. Now if only we could build an eco-casino…then we'd really be onto something.
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Listen, the green roof-thing is great, but as an architect, I need to point out the big 'ol headaches that go along with them. For one thing, you are both adding water to and kepping water on the roof. Now, any normal person would think, "But a roof is designed to be waterproof!?!" Yes, it is, to a degree, but more accurately, a roof is designed to keep water out of the building long enough to get it OFF the building. Normally water standing around on a roof equals leaks. Leaks equals BAD!
Additionally, all those plants and dirt and water are freakin' heavy! You need to reinforce the structure underneath by quite a bit. Don't forget that we get snow here, and all those plants are going to hold even more snow on the roof than normal, so you need to design the structure to hold up the plants, dirt, water (frozen), and extra drifted snow! Yikes!
Back to the leaky roof thing. As long as the contractor actually builds what we design (which doesn't always happen), it's quite rare for a building to collapse because of a structural failure. Leaky roofs, on the other hand, are really common and scare the crap out of architects. We put the necessary information on our 'blueprints', but then some crew of roofers has to go out and actually install the roof. One little screw-up on their part and you've got a leak. If you're lucky, the leak shows up quickly and in a visible location and you catch it and fix it. But sometimes, the leak is in a hidden location and leaks for a long time, causing all sorts of extensive (a.k.a. expensive) damage. Who ya gonna sue? Everybody! "Everybody" often includes the architect.
Thus, while I totally LOVE the idea of roof-top gardens, they are expensive and bring with them a bunch of serious problems.
The writing style on this piece hit just the right balance of snarky and informative. MORE of this kind of writing please. Thank you. (Rawr).