roof-garden
roof-garden. Plants within buildings (e.g. in courts or pots) have been features of architecture since Antiquity: after all, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were numbered among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but they were probably formed on terraces. However, we do not know enough about them to establish if they were true roof-gardens. The Romans, with their techniques of massive concrete construction, were able to have gardens on buildings (i.e. on terraces and roofs), and some of the more complex Renaissance villas were closely integrated into gardens, grottoes, terraces, etc. Gardens on the roofs of buildings became part of the imagery of the Modern Movement, notably in the drawings of Le Corbusier, and their creation became possible again with the development of reinforcedconcrete technology. At 101–111 Kensington High Street, London, a remarkable roof-garden was created (1937–8—one of the first in England) at the former Derry & Toms department store (1929–31—in a stripped Beaux-Arts Classical style): the building was designed by Bernard George (1894–1964). Also in the 1930s Burle Marx designed roof-gardens, notably at the Ministry of Education and Health Building, Rio de Janeiro (1936–43—by Costa, with Le Corbusier as consultant). During the second half of C20 roof-gardens proliferated (e.g. at the Oakland Museum, CA (by Kiley), in the late 1960s, and at Affleck's Place Bonaventure, Montréal, Canada (by Masao Kinoshita of Sasaki Associates—1967–8) ).
Bibliography
Kalman (1994);
Gollwitzer (1971);
Kalman (1994)
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roof-garden