eventually almost all houses will have a solar roof. The thing is to consider the time scale here to be probably on the order of 40 or 50 years. So on average, a roof is replaced every 20 to 25 years. But you don't start replacing all roofs immediately. But eventually, if you say were to fast-forward to say 15 years from now, it will be unusual to have a roof that does not have solar.
Based on German prototypes, green walls and roofs are a natural idea in Singapore's tropical environment, where mosses, ferns, philodendrons, orchids and other epiphytes literally grow on trees.
There must be a way to combine the high rise and high-density environment with nature. Maybe we can have our gardens in the sky.
What if we treat the high-rise like a mountain, or we have gardens in the sky, or waterfalls? I think that's the most challenging thing I want to try in my architecture.
Green roofs, roadside plantings, porous pavement, and sidewalk gardens have been proven to reduce flooding. They absorb rainwater before it swamps the streets and sewage systems.
We can engineer a building and design a building with least reliance on active machinery to make it inhabitable.
To allow millions of people to live together on limited land, we have to go to the sky; we have to build a high rise. But we can still build nature and social space into the towers. Each family can have their own courtyard in the sky.
The utilization of flat roofs as 'grounds' offers us a means of re-acclimatizing nature amidst the stony deserts of our great towns; for the plots from which she has been evicted to make room for buildings can be given back to her up aloft.
I am all for greening tall buildings, but I'm also very keen to note that greening a building doesn't cope with the problem of the tall building in the texture of the city.
