The New Garden Oasis: Residential Roofing in Menlo Park, CA Goes Green

Early this year, two high-profile green roof buildings bagged a prominent industry award, known throughout North America as the award body that recognizes excellence in architecture. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center and the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust joined nine other winners for the 2014 Institute Honor Award for Architecture given by the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Green roof technology in the U.S., including residential roofing in Menlo Park, CA and other places across the states, is catching up to Europe’s own rapid advances, with Germany, particularly, already sustaining a lucrative multi-million dollar industry for green roof products and services. Today, with more vocal U.S. policy support and public information, progressive establishments, as well as homeowners, are bolstered to live in greener spaces by their expanding awareness of the tangible and far-reaching benefits of green roofing.

The Brooklyn Botanical Garden was designed by Weiss/Manfredi Architects. The glassed-in structure features an undulating roof that modestly sweeps into a surface layer of green grass that extends back into the garden. The curved glass walls were designed to detract heat gain, while letting in natural light, and its Visitor Center was built to incorporate sustainable elements, such as a rain garden and a geothermal exchange. Archdaily.com describes the structure, thus:

“The Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center serves as a legible point of arrival while also defining a new threshold between the city and a variety of landscapes of the 52-acre garden.”

The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH), on the other hand, is a work that combines both “the urban and the metaphorical,” according to its designer Hagy Belzberg. Archdaily.com notes:

“Located within the Pan Pacific Park, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust balances spatial requirements with the introduction of a significant new structure into the urban park’s existing landscape.”

Concrete walls soar to meld with angled, split green roofing that effectively, or at least faintly, mute the sounds in the park nearby. There is the sense of being sequestered, of walking into isolation that awaited victims of genocide throughout history to whom the museum was dedicated.

Many homeowners across the US have also cleverly contrived an extra outdoor space in their property by looking up. Renovating your own home in Menlo Park to install green roofing technology require no extra land, yet will give you the added space to grow food, create a garden oasis, and improve air quality in your surroundings, among a long list of benefits. Make sure to do your research and consult only with a Menlo Park roofing contractor, such as Shelton Roofing, that has stayed up-to-date with environmentally friendly business practices and energy-efficient techniques.

(Source: 2014 AIA Institute Honor Awards for Architecture : archdaily.com)