Award / Auszeichnung (auch für Studenten) | 06/2023
New European Bauhaus Rising Stars 2023
©ROOFSCAPES - Content licensed to the European Union.
Roofscapes
Winner | Public vote
Architektur
Erläuterungstext
Roofscapes was launched by 3 French students at MIT in the aftermath of the 2018 and 2019 summer heatwaves, at the time the hottest on record in Europe. In addition to global warming at a continental scale, cities around the world are threatened by the urban heat island effect, a phenomenon through which urban areas experience higher temperatures than their surrounding rural areas (eg: +8°C in the center of Paris compared to the countryside 40 km away) due to the lack of vegetation in cities.
Since a widespread deployment of air conditioning would itself lead to an additional temperature increase during heat waves, the issue of passive cooling in cities is a question of urban and territorial resilience. The desartificialization and greening of cities are recognized as two of the best levers for action against the urban heat island effect. However, the densest urban areas in Europe, which suffer the most from urban heat islands, offer little free space for vegetation on the ground. Moreover, while roofs cover 30% of the horizontal surface of a city like Paris, the vast majority of buildings in European city centers have a pitched roof, making it impossible to install a traditional green roof.
Roofscapes' mission is to turn these untapped surfaces into green and accessible spaces in order to allow several billion square meters of European rooftops to fully participate in the mitigation of environmental issues and the reinforcement of social cohesion. Roofscapes transforms existing pitched roofs through the installation of mass-timber prefabricated platforms that welcome vegetation as well as human and non-human species.
©ROOFSCAPES - Content licensed to the European Union.