Melbourne, the capital of Australia’s southern state of Victoria is looking at a greener option for its city buildings and homes through creating green roofs, walls and facades.
This comes with the recent release of the first draft of the comprehensive guide on the construction of such facilities to help combat the effect of a changing climate.
“These guidelines offer innovative means of cooling buildings and the environment, while also increasing live-ability, so that our city can blossom with green infrastructure into the future” City of Melbourne Environment Councilor, Arron Wood said.
A green roof is a vegetated landscape built up from a series of layers that are installed on the roof surface as ‘loose laid’ sheets or modular blocks.
“The layers start from the roof deck, a waterproofing layer, root barrier, a protection mat, drainage layer, filter sheet, growing substrate (soil) and the vegetation layer.
Green walls are plants grown in vertical systems that can be freestanding but are generally attached to internal or external walls.
Green facades are created through the growth of climbing plants up and across the face of a building, from either plants rooted in the ground, or those in containers installed at different levels up the face of a building.
Green roofs are constructed for a number of reasons – as a space for people to visit, an architectural feature, to add value to the property or to achieve particular environmental benefits.
These benefits include:
- Improve air quality by controlling heat gain and the associated generation of smog.
- Improve the thermal performance within the building to minimize heat gain and cooling costs.
- To reduce the urban heat island effect caused by hard surfaces such as concrete, in an urban environment that contributes to the ambient rises in temperature.
- To help absorb and retain water, intercept and retain water from the early part of a storm, and limit the amount of run-off in larger storms in urban areas.
“Green roofs, walls and facades that are well designed can help to reduce urban storm water runoff, increase biodiversity or simply provide more greenery in the city, which is known to reduce people’s stress levels and improve mental health” Senior Lecturer in Urban Horticulture at the University of Melbourne, John Raynor said.
The guide is an initiative of the Growing Green Guide for Melbourne Project, a partnership between the original Inner Melbourne Action Plan councils the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Government.
The project is funded through the four councils and the Victorian Government’s Victorian Adaptation and Sustainability Partnership.
The final guide will be available early 2014.
