Chicago mayor Richard Daley became a strong advocate for green roofs of live plants while traveling in Europe. Now 120 will be built including one on City Hall and one above a huge subterranean parking garage and commuter train terminal … Continue reading →

Plants are blossoming on high as cities turn the rooftops of their homes and office blocks into little green lungs. Hugh Wilson visits the new urban jungle. The garden at Tokyo’s Keyakizaka complex is an oasis of calm and shade … Continue reading →

CHICAGO – In the center of downtown Chicago lies an oasis of green. Monarch butterflies flit past little bluestem. Bees fly from prairie clover to purple coneflowers. A small hawthorn tree rises from a mound. The expanse of native plants … Continue reading →

Deborah Gavito and Donna Binder, co-owners of the East Village vegetarian restaurant Counter, use 54 rooftop planters on top of their fifth-floor walk-up to grow the herbs and organic produce that appear on their menu daily. The garden, which was … Continue reading →

Look up in the heart of Reading town centre and you may just see an edible forest garden complete with wind turbine and solar panels peering back at you. Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC) has just created this amazing resource … Continue reading →

It’s difficult to imagine a less natural setting than an urban center such as Philadelphia, where it can be rare to see any vestige of the natural environment amid the gray-shaded mosaic of steel, stone and glass. And yet just … Continue reading →

Roof greening, having been developed for years in foreign countries, is at the very outset in China. Statistics shows that buildings with their roofs greened take up only 1 percent in wholly existing buildings, with an area of 500 thousand … Continue reading →

It all started in ancient Mesopotamia. That’s how old the idea of a “green” roofs is. From the Ziggurat of Nanna to the fabled hanging gardens of Babylon, humans have been growing plants on roofs. Turf and sod have topped … Continue reading →

How did this design improve life?: Lying at the center of the Ford Rouge revitalization project in Dearborn, Michigan, this new truck assembly plant represents Ford’s bold efforts to rethink the ecological footprint of a large manufacturing facility. The design … Continue reading →

Those who think that living beneath a roof alive with plants is medieval haven’t seen the world through the eyes of Michael Perry. Perry runs a company that makes roof systems for people who want a verdant layer between themselves … Continue reading →