Green Infrastructure

Green roofs on the Asa Flats & Lofts in Portland, Oregon help with stormwater retention and provide a pleasant view from the residences above. The rooftop courtyard is an inviting community space with garden planters, a pet station, and seating areas. This project won an international 2010 Award of Excellence from Green Roofs for Healthy Cities.
Summary: Green infrastructure, such as green roofs, green walls, and rain gardens, are excellent strategies to increase habitat and biodiversity on and around buildings, manage stormwater flows on site, treat greywater, lower surface air temperatures, and provide public amenities like community open space or educational experiences.
The courtyard at Asa has space for residents to cultivate produce in raised beds.
Green Roofs: GGLO has designed over 100,000 square feet of green roofs on a variety of building types that provide a myriad of social, environmental and financial benefits. They are an excellent design strategy for meeting the triple bottom line objectives of people-planet-profit based sustainable design. Environmentally, green roofs can help urban projects move towards pre-settlement conditions by restoring habitat and biodiversity and increasing stormwater retention on site. They also contribute to lowering the surface temperature of roof surfaces, an outcome that is particularly useful for countering the urban heat island effect when green roofs are grouped together. Socially, green roofs can foster community by providing outdoor amenity spaces for local urban farming and gathering. Further, building residents and neighbors benefit from improved views from above and reduced noise levels from traffic and airplanes. They can bring incredible educational value to a site or building, and quickly communicate goals and how they are reached to residents and users. Financially, green roofs can help increase the real estate value of a property and the marketability of a building as a whole. They can increase the lifespan of the roof membrane while lowering maintenance and replacement costs. On a case by case basis and depending on the governing agency, green roofs can help meet green building codes, like Seattle’s Green Factor; lighten zoning requirements; and provide Floor Area Ratio (FAR) bonuses.
The Lovejoy in Portland, OR has a 26,000sf extensive green roof on the roof level (above) and a public intensive green roof on the 7th level (below).
GGLO’s expertise in green roofs covers both deep soil intensive roofs and shallow soil extensive roofs. See our Green Roof Case Study (PDF) to learn more about our projects, and click here to find a PDF map of GGLO’s Green Roofs in Seattle, to see what we’ve built and what’s ‘on the boards.'
The green wall inside the Bertschi School’s Living Building Science Wing (left) was designed by GGLO to serve as the building’s primary greywater treatment infrastructure as well as serve as a decorative feature within the classroom. It was partly inspired by an idea generated in a student visioning session to create “a greenhouse where something is always growing." It is planted with low-light, dry-tolerant and wet-tolerant house plants. The green wall on the George F Russell Jr. Hall Building (right) was envisioned as a green backdrop for a Japanese inspired memorial garden.
Green Walls: Similar to horizontal green roofs, vegetation can be applied to vertical surfaces to form Green Walls in an interior or exterior setting. Green Walls are not only decorative features, but can filter greywater or stormwater by absorbing pollutants, mineralizing the dissolved nutrients and making them available to plants. Green walls are usually found in urban environments where they contribute to reducing the overall temperatures of a building due to due to heat build-up from the absorption of solar radiation. They decrease local carbon dioxide emissions and noise while increasing humidity levels, trapping dust and creating habitat. Interior green walls can boost morale and productivity, by bringing fresher air and keeping occupants alert and with a feeling of overall health. Exterior Green Walls reduce solar heat gain and, by extension, building energy costs. They also provide protection from the effects of UV radiation and acid rain. In the case of the Bertschi School Science Wing, greywater is collected from the classroom sinks, cleaned and dispersed by a continuous loop of evapotranspiration within an interior green wall; no greywater is discharged outside of the building envelope. Click here for a sequential diagram of the building's ecological water flow.
GGLO designed this Rain Garden and Overlook in Tacoma, WA to retain and filter stormwater, and serve as an educational amenity to the community.
Rain Gardens: Rain Gardens are an example of Low Impact Development (LID), a broad set of strategies aimed at re-thinking the built environment to bring it into balance with the natural environment. Prior to development, rain falling on a site was absorbed into the ground and slowly drained to water bodies or recharged groundwater. With development came roofs, roads, and other hard surfaces that block water movement into the ground. These surfaces generate runoff that washes motor oil, pesticides, pet waste, and other untreated pollutants quickly and directly into rivers and lakes. Rain Gardens counteract this process by passing the stormwater through organically enriched soil that filters out pollutants and either slows the release of the water into the storm system or percolates it into the ground. Generally designed with adaptive, native plant material, rain gardens do not require fertilizers, are tolerant of local climatic conditions and attract native birds and pollinators. Soil composition is critical for the successful installation of a rain garden. Soils must be permeable or should allow for water to percolate, through drywell or underground dispersion. By installing Rain Gardens, water flowing from a site to a body of water will be slowed and cleansed - helping to rebuild and preserve the health of water bodies for the enjoyment of future generations.
Rain gardens and interpretive signage at Burien Town Square are part of a PSRC Vision 2030 Award Winning project designed by GGLO for Burien's outdoor "Living Room." The rain gardens are a demonstration project for nearby residents of Burien and for shoppers, and County staff who frequently use this destination.
GGLO Team: Mark Sindell Principal, ASLA, LEED AP BD+C and Marieke Lacasse Associate, ASLA, CSLA, LEED AP BD+C
Resources: “Seattle Green Roof Evaluation Project: Final Report” (1.6MB PDF), March 2007, Magnusson Klemencic Associates (web summary available on ENR.com) Green Roof Performance Studies, Green Futures Lab, University of Washington Green Roof Resources, City of Seattle, Department of Planning and Development Heat Island Effect US EPA “Working Map of Existing Green Roofs within the Seattle City Limits” (PDF), City of Seattle, August 2010
Related Presentations & Publications: GGLO Green Roof Case Study (1MB PDF) GGLO's Green Roofs in Seattle Map (1MB PDF) Asa Flats + Lofts, Awards of Excellence, Intensive Residential Category, 2010, Living Architecture Monitor (1MB PDF) Bertschi School Living Building Science Wing, Ecological Water Flow Sequential Diagram (4MB PDF) “Green Factor: Redux, Leveraging Seattle’s Green Code to Create Urbane Spaces” (5MB PDF), August 31, 2011, Mark Sindell ASLA, LEED-AP BD+C and Zack Thomas ASLA, LEED-AP ND