Green Roofs

Carrot Common

In 1987 the Carrot Common was developed as a group of stores centred around a courtyard onDanforth Avenue with'The Big Carrot' health food store. The north roof of the Carrot Common provided a large area that could be transformed into a community roof deck, green roof and vegetable garden. 

The large deck area will be used for food classes, meetings,yoga classes and celebrations. Large parts of the roof area covered by an 'extensive' green roof of sedums, grasses andherbs that will help insulate the building below and reduce theheat sink of a large flat, black roof area. An important function of the green roof will be to grow food in 'intensive' gardenplanting boxes and teaching neighbourhood groups how togrow food. The grey plastic planting boxes are constructed witha water reservoir in the bottom and watering tube. They were designed for people in urban apartments to grow vegetables on small balconies, roofs, etcetera. These boxes were located throughout the roof area and planted by members of the community. 

Some of the team members were David Walsh - Manager, Shen Adachi - Project Coordinator, Zora Ignjatovic - HorticulturalConsultant, Jane Neff - Landscape Designer, Dan Jenkins Property Manager, Michael Kupka - Graphic Artist, Jai Jot Lafayette - Steering Committee Coordinator, Dennis Morrison - Steering Committee, Chris Dhirani - Contractor, Matthew Krist -Greenhouse Planner, Sean Henry - Structural Engineer, Kim Curry - Designer.

Woodsworth Co-op

Built in 1979, Woodsworth is located in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood of Toronto. This 8 storey federally funded non-profit co-op building has 122 units. The original 9th floor included a large common room with laundry and a small roof patio, however, the rest of the roof was not occupiable. Since the roof membrane needed replacing, the co-op also decided to turn half of the roof into a “green roof”.

On the patio area we redesigned a large trellis that extended from side to side with raised planter beds that could be used by people that needed to be seated while gardening. The structural capacity of the roof area limited most of the roof area to meadow. Deeper planters for vegetables and larger flowers were located over the structural shear walls below which could take the additional loading.