Green Roofs around the World

 
   
     
 
 

A green roof restores the eco-system that was removed when the home was built providing a habitat for butterflies, bees and birds. The insulation (the plants) and thermal mass (the soil) makes the building more energy efficient. The soil lowers the overall roof temperature and the temperature swings between day and night. The plants absorb and filter the rainwater reducing excess storm runoff. Here's SunRay Kelly talking about the living (green) roof.

  SunRay on the Living Roof  
   
           
     

Romania

 
       

Germany

 
     

Sweden

 
     
           

This tiny cob house in the lush green hills of Romania on the banks of the Nera River was built by Ileana Mavrodin. You can see more of the home on her website at www.casa-verde.ro and take a closer look inside in the video below.
 
  Ileana Mavrodin's cob home  
 

Ileana talks about her cob home

 

 

This building is the work of artist, designer and architect Hundertwasser. It's the McDonald's Kinderhilfe Stiftung, a guest house for the parents of seriously ill children in the nearby hospital in Essen, Germany. Hundertwasser said, "When one creates green roofs the houses themselves become part of the landscape."

The roof garden is an extension of the living space and should be accessible from the home without having to climb up to the garden. For large buildings Alexander, in his book A Pattern Language, recommends placing roof gardens at different levels on the building.

 

This is an entirely naturally built cabin used as a store room. Its green roof uses birch bark and only birch bark for its waterproof membrane. It's one of the many beautiful natural buildings by Hakan at Urnatur in Sweden.

Hakan built all the natural homes in the woodland where he lives by Lake Vattern. Together with is wife Ulrika they run courses in cabin building using traditional skills and natural materials and other workshops in fence building, wild herbs and woodland skills like harvesting birch sap.

 
           
     

Canada

 
     

USA

 
   

Norway

 
     
           

This is a traditional Scottish dry stone home called a Blackhouse however this one is in Canada. Here are some blackhouses in Scotland. The house was built using 126 tons of stone at Eric Landman’s farm near Grand Valley, ON. Notice steps are built into the wall leading up to the chimney and the green roof.

 

 

Hidden away in a lush Oregon woodland near Coquille, OR, USA is a collection of tiny cob homes with names like Dawn and Dusk and the jewel among them is the the home of Ianto and Linda called Laughing House. Ianto and Linda run the Cob Cottage Company sharing their many years of natural building experience and philosophy with people from all over the world.

 

This is the bath house at Noatun Farm in Øvre Pasvik, Norway. It is near the border with Russia in the very north of Norway. This little building, which serves as a bathroom, was built by Hans Schaanning around 1907. Read more about him and his sad love story. The roof is almost entirely self seeded moss and lichen on a birch bark membrane.

 
           
   

Wales

 

Iceland

 
   

Denmark

 
     
           

Charlie's roundhouse in Wales has a reciprocal green roof; a roofing method popularised by Tony Wrench who was one of the many that helped Simon Dale to build his woodland home. Tony's book, Building a Low Impact Roundhouse, details how to build a reciprocal roof.

 

This is one of Iceland's 18th century fishing stations. It's built using thick dry stone walls with a timber roof under thick insulating layers of turf. This is the maritime museum just outside Bolungarvik. Find out more about Iclandic fishing stations.

 

This is a green roof made of seaweed. It's one of the traditional homes at Læsø, Denmark. The timber used in the house is from the ships that ran aground on the coast in the 1860s. The huge attractive seaweed roof demonstrates to the ability of the inhabitants to utilise the natural, and waste, materials that were available to them. Here's more about these seaweed roofs.

 

Share your thoughts with your friends...

 

More about Natural Building...