Grey Lady Goes Ga-Ga for Green Roofs

Gap Headquarters' Rolling Green Roofs Photo by William McDonough + Partners

It is always a lovely thing to read about green roofs blooming across the country, from Seattle's own perched oases at City Hall and the new Justice Center to the Rouge River Ford Plant in Dearborn, MI and Chicago's City Hall, with its recreated midwest prairie ecosystem. But to read about it in the New York Times is, of course, even better.

The article focuses on the work of Rana Creek Habitat Restoration as they partner with Renzo Piano to design a big old meadow for the top of the refurbished California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. (In a recent stop in town, Paul Kephart, founder of Rana Creek, recounted how Piano was initially opposed to the messy meadow about his slick modernish architecture. Uh, hello, Academy of Science? Ecology? Climate Change?)

Kephart was actually in town because he will be helping to work on the new green roofed parking garage at the new Gates Foundation headquarters at 5th Avenue, across from the Seattle Center. If his past work is any indication, the headquarters will be looking amazing in a few years . . . or atleast the parking garage will, and how many places can you say that about?