Witold Rybcznski is the King of the Green One-liners | Nov 7th at 6:42pm
“A degree of skepticism is part of the territory. It is a questioning of many of the solutions proposed. If grass on the roof ok, why is grass on the front lawn so bad.?”
“We give prizes to buildings that don’t exist, that is like giving an Oscar to a movie that hasn’t been made.”
“Suddenly everyone is green, it is like the green fairy came in the night and touched us all.”
Lloyd Alter has been an architect, developer, inventor, and builder of prefab housing. He now writes for TreeHugger and Planet Green, is an Associate Professor at Ryerson University teaching sustainable design, and has written for Azure and Ontario Nature magazines.
travels2 on Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 6:01pm
About grass roofs vs. grass lawns, well, it’s probably because the typical black roof is a contributor to the urban heat island effect and a green roof isn’t. The criticisms of grass as a front lawn is that it sheds water and doesn’t help replenish the water table, among other things. Grass on a roof also sheds water (nearly as much as a regular roof) but it would be dangerous to retain water on a roof for a number of reasons, beginning with the weight of the water. No green roof is made to retain that much water. Grass as a front lawn also takes up space that could be used for other plants (such as edibles), and while a roof could be used for the same thing, the benefits of a grass roof come in the comparison between a grass roof and a standard one. The more environmentally-friendly yard plantings also often require deeper root systems which a roof may not have the depth for.
I’m not totally convinced of the long-term benefits of grass roofs in general, mostly because they need to be maintained in ways that future owners may not be willing to do. I am surprised, however, at Rybcznski not noticing the different benefits of the same material being when used in different ways.