by Jason King
Readers of the blog updates for TERRA.fluxus will recognize that a good portion of the work is focused on rooftop-related design (i.e. vegitecture) such as terraces, green roof, and ecoroof projects. In this vein, and in keeping with my love of interesting infographics, I thought it would be interesting to chart my past and current rooftop greening projects to see how they stacked up as a cumulative body of work. This consists of work done independently, as well as work completed at previous firms (noted by color differences in the main graphic bar). It also incorporates physical projects that have been installed (green acreage color bar to the left) – with a caveat that the most recent project is ‘almost’ done, so I moved it prematurely into the actual. Other projects that are currently in design process or awaiting building construction show up in dot pattern towards the top of the chart to show recent work (date range and cumulative square footage is on the right). I’ve left out other projects that were designed, in various stages, but did not proceed to become real projects for one reason or the other.
It’s interesting to note the tipping point from late 2009 through 2010 for projects. From the first project in 2001, it has been a relatively slow progression, with a couple of projects a year resulting in around 10,000 square feet of total rooftop area – culminating in a bit over 80,000 square feet after 8 years. (note: I’m including the entire roof area that was part of the scope including paved areas, plazas, etc. and not just the vegetated areas) This isn’t surprising over all, as the city of Portland, particularly downtown where most of my work has been focused, is characterized by small (200′x200′) blocks, meaning that with site constraints, it’s rare to see a project exceed 20,000 s.f.
Converse to the economy, in the past year, the size and overall number of projects increasing (total built and designed – to be constructed) is almost an acre this year – with expected construction of all projects – with the exception of Van Ness Medical Center which is slated for 2012. This may be an indication of a slight market recovery, or perhaps a reflection on the health of the ecoroof market utilizing combined incentives plus requirements from municipalities. Is this a sign that the forces are aligning for making green rooftops a more economically viable asset to construction? Perhaps it is an indication that the design-build market may be finally starting to bear some fruit through the bundling of services under one banner?
Another aside (not reflected in the graphic but interesting nonetheless) is the breakdown of new construction to retrofit projects (for all those naysayers bent on nixing the viability of retrofit roofs). Of the 135,770 s.f. installed and designed, 70,100 s.f. of this is retrofit roofs done in conjunction with re-roofing of an existing structure. This amounts to over half of the projects (51.6%) that are retrofit, not surprisingly many of these are current projects – as the slow-down in new construction has limited that range of projects.
With more expansive data, it would be interesting to crunch some of the local and regional data (not just my projects) to tease out some trends in the overall industry. Perhaps a project for another day, as I have some ecoroof projects to work on.
In this class, a combination of architecture and landscape architecture students are going to blend theory with on the ground techniques related to large-scale, landscape-focused urban analysis, planning and design. The major technical components will focus on GIS mapping and using this as a tool for multidisciplinary design, as well as studying the agency of mapping (a major tenet of landscape urbanism theory) as a tool for communication and organization of complex spatial information.
