Breathing New Life into Urban Rooftops
Marni Horwitz knows her way around some of the coolest rooftops in New York City. As a green roof specialist, she spends much of her time planning and installing green roofs all over Manhattan and beyond. Her company, Alive Structures, installs both green roofs and ecological gardens and produces planters made of recycled materials like reclaimed wood and recycled paper.
Also a biology conservationist, Horwitz’s business is an excellent example of an environmentally innovative company that shows great promise with regard to both bolstering the economy and healing the environment. Earth911.com recently spoke with Horwitz to learn more about the benefits of green roofs and planters.
Green rooftops are easy on both the environment and your wallet by lowering energy costs. Photo: Projectloop.org
Harnessing and Healing the Urban Landscape
Alive Structures is a full service design-and-build company that works with homeowners, business owners and architects to design green spaces for an array of structures from homes to schools to restaurants.
“It’s exciting to turn an empty lot into a beautiful area for thousands of species,” Horwitz says.
Horwitz meets with clients and puts together an estimate, proposal and design. Once this is finished, she and her colleagues conduct the entire installation of the roof or garden. All of the species used on rooftops are drought-tolerant and hardy, so maintenance is minimal. In gardens, the company focuses on using native species of the Northeast.
Alive Structures also partners with schools to help with the installation of green roofs. According to Horwitz, “Green roofs are excellent educational tools.” The final piece of the business is the planters, which are small replicas of what one might find in a green roof or garden. They are made from recycled materials and include saxifrage, native plants, alpine species and succulents.
Intelligent Design
Horwitz started Alive Structures two years ago, but she has been interested in green design since an early age thanks to her mother, who has owned a landscape design business for the past 20 years. After college, Horwitz worked for the Gaia Insitute, which works to recreate wetlands, remediate brownfields and install green roofs. She also apprenticed with Green Living Technologies, a green roof and green wall installation company. After becoming a certified installer, she started Alive Structures.
Reducing the Concrete Footprint
The conversion of the urban environment into natural habitat has several environmental and monetary benefits:
- Lowers energy bills and overall temperature – Green roofs reduce annual energy bills by 15 to 30 percent by providing insulation in the summer and winter and through evapotranspiration, the plant’s natural process of breathing in toxic air, digesting it and breathing out cooler, purified air. The result is the surface of the roof is 50 or 60 degrees cooler in the summer, which affects both the temperature of the building and the overall temperature of the city.
- Improves overall air quality – Rooftop plants filter air particulates as well as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide.
- Reduces urban heat island effect – Cities in general are several degrees warmer than areas with vegetation. Green roofs lower the overall temperature of the air around them.
- Creates natural habitat – Horwitz works with native plants on green roofs to create a biodiverse habitat, which is important for migratory and overwintering species.
- Longevity for the roof - Green roofs greatly extend the life of the waterproof membrane of a roof, which is a section that usually needs to be replaced every 10-15 years due to damage from UV rays and extreme weather.
Rooftop plants filter air particulates as well as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide. Photo: Freshome.com
Rooftop plants filter air particulates as well as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide. Photo: Freshome.com
Raising the Roof on Awareness
Horwitz has seen a huge surge of interest in green roofs. Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, an organization dedicated to spreading the word about green roofs, has seen a huge increase in membership.
Municipalities are catching on as well. New York City just passed a tax incentive for homeowners that install green roofs.
Getting Back to the Roots
Above all, Horwitz enjoys planning and installing each new microcosm of urban renewal.
“I love getting my hands dirty,” she says. “I really enjoy the process of designing and choosing the plants because it requires me to be artistic and thoughtful.”
Her favorite part, though, is the actual planting. “It’s transforming and magical to go up to a peaceful rooftop in March in the middle of the city and be surrounded by purple crocuses.”
Finding Opportunity in Crisis
The current economic situation has certainly made it more difficult for business owners and homeowners to install green roofs, but Horwitz sees investment in the green economy as one of the most viable solutions.
“From improved air quality, to water quality, to increased natural habitat, there are so many public benefits to green roofs,” she says.
Horwitz is hoping to install larger green roofs on industrial buildings such as locations in Long Island City and Queens, where their office is located. She will continue to sell planters and work with schools to install green spaces.
Favorite of the Three R’s
An innovator, Horwitz embraces her own set of “R’s” – renew, remediate and rejuvenate. Of those three, her favorite is rejuvenate.
“The economy, education, energy and the environment are all interconnected,” she says. “If we can create new industries around rejuvenating polluted areas and finding new sources of energy, the quality of life for everyone will be vastly improved.”
Eric Lam
posted on March 30th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Yes, I always feel that we can make use of the rooftop for one of our local food supply resourse. It is not only for the green look. It helps our food supply, house insulation, decrease the energy for heating the house, make use of the over run rain water ….. ….
Trey Granger
posted on March 31st, 2009 at 10:05 am
Solid article, Libuse. One other benefit I can see of plant life on the roof is improved drainage. A flat roof can get weighed down by rainfall and cause leaks, but plants will be able to absorb a lot of this water. It’s like a natural version of a rain barrel.
UKGBC releases report, “Biodiversity and the Built Environment” « BuildIntel
posted on March 31st, 2009 at 10:08 am
[...] building products like green roofs, living walls, as well as building practices like landscape architecture, parks and urban gardens [...]
Hosting Men
posted on March 31st, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Heh what great idea. Never really seen this but it is a very cool innovation, its nice and there are great benefits
Chris
posted on April 1st, 2009 at 5:15 pm
The persistent problem with rooftop gardening has always been weight of soil. It’s something like 200 pounds per cubic foot when saturated. Not sure about that, it sounds high, but weight is still a problem once you have a whole rooftop dedicated to plants. I was introduced to a new type of soil called “GaiaSoil”. It is about 1/3 as heavy as regular soil when wet, but the results are just as good as regular soil. It is made out of recycled styrofoam and compost. This stuff will revolutionize the whole rooftop gardening movement.
GreenvsGreedy
posted on April 4th, 2009 at 8:18 am
On a much smaller scale, I know people are re-using plastic storage bins to create mini-gardens on their decks, balcony, rooftops… A friend has great success with these for tomatoes and peppers! I would think the risk of chemical leaching from the plastic into the soil is low??? Any comment?
GreenvsGreedy
http//greenvsgreedy.blogspot.com/
Adam Ballai
posted on April 4th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I just recently saw a special pertaining to this on discovery channel. I’m intrigued by the concept, but how does one lower the energy cost and not waste more energy just trying to get water on to the top of buildings?
Wayne Mills
posted on April 5th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Adam,
The plants used on extensive greenroofs, (roofs with 3-5″ of soil) are generally succulent plants mainly from the Sedum family. These plants require very little water once established and do quite well with the natural rainfall and require little or no additional irrigation. Usually needing watering just the first few weeks after planting and nothing more.
Chris
posted on April 14th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Getting water up to the roof I would think is the easy part, especially in New York where most of the tall buildings already have rooftop water tanks. Also, it’s not a matter of getting it all the way to the roof, it’s just getting it up one more floor. Rain harvesting is also a great idea for this.
Karina
posted on October 18th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I love the new way to bring life to big cities like New York or Mexico city. I would like to learn and bring green roofing to Xalapa, Veracruz MEXICO where I live. We help the enviroment and allows to have fun designing and creating green areas.
Jen
posted on November 2nd, 2009 at 10:36 am
There is a great children’s book called “The Curious Garden” which my son got for his birthday this year. It’s about a boy who starts to create urban gardens in unexpected places, and by the end of the book the entire city is transformed into green spaces. Abandoned train tracks, staircases, rooftops, and any other available space comes to life. I love the idea.