High above Chicago, an island of green flourishes, an oasis of verdant cool on a hot August day. Perched atop the recently renovated Chicago City Hall grows a rolling landscape of shrubs and groundcover, punctuated with walkways. It’s called a green roof, and it’s the creation of Roofscapes Inc., one of the foremost practitioners of green roofing in the country.
Founded in 1997 by Charlie Miller, Roofscapes has worked on projects nationwide, both residential and commercial. Their designs have garnered considerable attention, including eight design awards. The green roof in Chicago is a centerpiece of their portfolio; completed in 2002, it’s the recipient of a prestigious Professional Merit Award from The American Society of Landscape Architects.
Roofscapes has a unique business model. From its offices in Philadelphia, the company licenses a network of landscape contractors around the country. After submitting an extensive application, potential contractors are thoroughly vetted. If a candidate seems like a good match, Roofscapes will arrange a meeting between personnel at each end. “It’s really important that the owners are invested with green roofs,” says Roofscapes principal Melissa Muroff. “It’s usually not a very good fit if the decision makers at the contracting firm are not particularly interested.”
Roofscapes’ contractors pay an annual licensing fee, and participate in annual training sessions. The company is also rolling out quarterly webinars for contractors. “It’s really important to us that they’re trained,” says Muroff. “It’s as simple as that, because we’re warrantying their work.” With jobs far-flung from Roofscapes’ headquarters, a well-coordinated network is key. “It helps us to have contractors that are trained and understand the mechanics and hydrodynamics of green roofs, and understand the materials that we like to use,” Muroff continues. Roofscapes’s personnel are present at every jobsite, with duration determined both by the complexity and the proximity of the project, as well as the experience of the contractor.
Green roofs do more than just look good; green roof technology confers a host of benefits. Among the most obvious is reducing energy consumption: In the summer, Chicago City Hall’s roof is as much as 30 degrees cooler than surrounding rooftops. Many urban planners look to green roofs to help mitigate the metropolitan “heat island” effect. Improved stormwater management is another bonus, helping to conserve energy and reducing the load on municipal drainage systems. All of these advantages add up to valuable points in attaining LEED certification. Use of recycled materials can bolster ratings further, and green roofs can extend the useful life of waterproof roofing materials. Additionally, green roofs can improve quality of life for occupants, reducing ambient noise levels, as well as providing a tranquil respite. An invigorated habitat for wildlife completes an environmentally-friendly picture.
Although comparatively new to the U.S., green roof technology is fully mature, having been developed in Europe and elsewhere for decades. Germany has led the trend, with a green roof industry that began in the 1960s; today, it’s estimated that 10 percent of German roofs have been “greened.” Green roofs can be roughly divided into two categories: Extensive roofs are comparatively shallow, and are frequently designed to achieve specific engineering and performance goals. Intensive roofs boast greater depth, and often merge into on-structure landscapes featuring large perennial plants and trees.
Miller looks to a variety of technologies and approaches, tailoring for individual factors including the overall height of the structure, the pitch of the roof and its load-bearing capacity, as well as client goals and expectations. Plant choice is key to a sustainable rooftop environment, which can endure much harsher conditions than a ground level garden, and built-in irrigation systems are de rigueur. The resulting installation can present a landscape ranging from a comparatively shallow flower-strewn meadow to a denser “woodland” setting combining turf, meadow, small trees and shrubs, with a typical depth of 12 inches or more. The installation in Chicago, for instance, boasts a range of plantings, with soil depths from three to 18 inches. In an online essay, Charlie Miller refers to green roofing as “a marriage of the sciences of horticulture, waterproofing and engineering.”
Roofscapes is a lean operation, with an in-house staff comprising six full-time employees and one part-timer, with specialties including civil engineering, horticulture, and landscape architecture. Among the principals, Miller is a civil engineer, and Muroff, an attorney with a background as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.
As any modern concern, Roofscapes maintains an online presence, a Web site that acts as a potent marketing tool. At once densely informational and compellingly attractive, the site educates visitors about the benefits of green roofs, explaining in great depth the different types of systems, and their various strengths and suitabilites. One particularly savvy inclusion is an online project worksheet, which allows potential clients to plug in various job parameters, for review by Roofscapes staff. While helping clients to collect the most salient details of their project, the page also serves as a virtual gatekeeper. “We were originally getting so many phone calls from people looking for education, kicking the tires. I mean architects, developers, even students,” recalls Muroff. “We were finding that we would spend all day with phone calls. So by posting that Web form, we thought that would allow us, once we saw the profile of the project, we would be better able to triage.”
Roofscapes is a strong proponent of design-build project delivery, and it’s a growing portion of their workload. Muroff cites quality assurance as the key advantage to design-build, as well as tighter budgetary oversight. “We manage a network of landscape contractors, and in doing that provide quality assurance around their bidding, construction and maintenance, as well as providing the warranty of their work.”
“The reality is, it’s at least 10 percent cheaper for our clients if they hire us as design-build,” Muroff continues. “If they let us design the green roof, and prepare the specifications for the design, and have our contractors build it, it’s probably 10-15 percent cheaper, and the quality will be better.” Muroff ruefully recounts projects where less qualified contractors have specified inappropriate vegetation, a not uncommon outcome. Plant choice is critical to a sustainable green roof, and professionals without green roof-specific backgrounds can make poor choices, leaving clients high and dry — sometimes literally.
Looking to the future, Roofscapes has undertaken a rebranding exercise, working with a consultant to position them best in an evolving climate. “We’re revisiting how Roofscapes is perceived in the marketplace, revisiting the market itself and stepping back to identify where we function best,” says Muroff. “Our conclusion is, it’s all about design-build…that’s our best value for the client, that’s where we perform the best.” Muroff is candid about the firm’s desire to increase the percentage of design-build work and heartened by rumblings that signal a shift in that direction. “My rep in D.C. is telling me the new trend in his market is the general contractors are bidding the job as design-build and the architects are looking toward generals to walk in with a team to do these jobs,” she concludes. “He’s telling me ‘Buckle your seatbelts.’” Muroff notes a definite uptick in design-build for federal projects, and hopes to see the trend echoed at the municipal level.
A construction atmosphere that increasingly stresses environmental concerns can only be good news for Roofscapes. Technologies and approaches that would have seemed radical just a few years ago are now seen as necessary adjuncts to revitalized cities, and re-imagined energy strategies. Twelve stories above Chicago, Roofscapes has already proven their readiness for a cleaner, greener tomorrow.
Joshua Gray is a freeelance writer and regular contributor to Landscape Architecture magazine.