OBSERVATION: Hong Kong’s roofs are vastly underutilized and contribute the city’s “heat island effect.”
SOLUTION: Provide green roofs on Hong Kong’s flat rooftops that are allow for small-scale food production.
What if only a fraction of the thousands of Hong Kong’s underutilized rooftops were to be retrofitted with green roofs? New buildings could have permanent installations, while older buildings with structural limitations could be retrofitted with lighter weight modular units.
BENEFITS:
- Teaches our children where food comes from and how it’s grown
- Reduces thermal gain to floors below
- Assists in stormwater management
- Becomes a community gathering area, especially for the elderly
- Strengthens neighborhood building
- Facilitates corporate CSR objectives
- Decreases reliance on imported food
Taking things one step further; if Hong Kong’s rooftops could be come urban farms; could these areas also become more vertical in nature and have multiple stacked layers?