Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - 13

CASE STUDY

MOVING A ROOF:

UNBUILDING
AND REBUILDING
THE COOK FOX
GREEN ROOF
IN NEW YORK
BY GWEN SCHANTZ, FOUNDING PARTNER, BROOKLYN GRANGE

We've built several green roofs in New York City, and the big ones that
we install with cranes over the course of several weeks always get all the
attention. But it's the small roofs, on tall buildings and accessible only by
stairs and elevators, that we put the most thought into.

O

ne of the most notable small projects we've built came about
in the fall of 2016, when Cook Fox Architects reached out
because they were moving to a new office space. We were
excited to work with them- they're one of the leading firms
in New York specializing in sustainable design and LEED projects.
We were also fans of their old office, a historic penthouse where
the architects themselves had built a green roof in 2006, where they
grew vegetables, sedum, wildflowers and even kept bees.
The staff had developed a loyalty to their green roof over the
years; so a decade later, when the firm had outgrown its office and
was knee-deep in the renovation of their new space thirty blocks
uptown, they reached out to us, asking if we could move it for them.
Their landlords at the old office didn't want to keep the 5,000 sf
sedum installation, and rather than dumpstering the whole thing,

LIVINGARCHITECTUREMONITOR.COM

Cook Fox employees hoped to
move it to the terraces of their
new office. They had built this
green roof themselves, had cultivated it and watched it grow for
years, and throwing it out was
not in keeping with their commitment to sustainability. It also
didn't hurt that the cost of moving the green roof was less than
the cost of dumpstering it and
building a new one from scratch.
Plus, they had anticipated this
day when they built the green

roof, and they had prepared for
it: the green roof was a modular
system made with knitted polyethelyne green paks.
Full disclosure: I wasn't a
big fan of modular green roof
systems. When we build green
roofs, they tend to be intensive
agricultural or meadow systems
with deep growing medium,
and it doesn't make sense to
use modular systems for this
kind of work. When we've built
sedum green roofs, we like the

LIVING ARCHITECTURE MONITOR / SUMMER 2018 / 13


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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018

Table of Contents
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - I
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - Cover1
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - Cover2
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - Table of Contents
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - A
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - 1
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - 2
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - 3
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - 4
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Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - 34
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - Cover3
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - Cover4
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - M1
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - A1
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Summer 2018 - A2
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https://www.nxtbook.com/dawson/greenroofs/lam_2012winter
https://www.nxtbook.com/dawson/greenroofs/lam_2011fall
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