Green roofs in urban areas integrate ecological restoration into the urban platform, offering benefits from functional energy efficiency savings to long-term cultivation of urban biodiversity. They also provide aesthetic beauty and opportunities for gardening, farming, and storm water management. This technology is a supported trellis system that creates synthetic forest canopies on rooftops and urban public spaces. Several units can be combined to make custom sized canopies for almost any urban location. This technology has been recognized for its exceptionally innovative design by the EPA and was awarded Honorable Mention in the 2012 Campus RainWorks Challenge.
Rooftops cluttered with elevator machinery, HVAC systems, or impediments to traditional green roof transformations become “greenable” with this technology. This opens a new market for providing the environmental performance benefits and opportunities for green roof incentives. The technology is a turn-key roof greening solution capable of modular expansion to create canopies of any size without disturbing the equipment or activities on the roof (or ground, in other urban spaces) and providing them with shade. The garden can be used to provide beauty and shade in any location, as well as areas for farming.
The technology consists of three distinct functional components: the vine to maximize foliar water uptake, the trellis to maximize intercepted rainfall, and the substrate to maximize infiltration, absorbance, and resilience. Preliminary models show performance comparable to existing green roof systems and a lower materials cost.
Patent Pending
Available for licensing and sponsored research support
Tech Ventures Reference: IR CU13268