GRHC’s 2021 Jeffrey L. Bruce Awards of Excellence Winning Projects and People Announced
Green Roofs for Healthy Cities is excited to announce the Jeffrey L. Bruce Awards of Excellence winners for 2021 and the virtual presentation on Wednesday, January 19, 2022 from 2:30 PM - 4:30 PM est. The Awards of Excellence winners have again pushed the boundaries of living architecture. Designers expertly integrate nature into projects and bring their unique sense of style.
Here are the 2021 Awards of Excellence winners. For details on the award winning projects and people, please continue to the bottom of the article or register for the free awards webinar here!
Category: Research Award of Excellence
Research Project: Prairie Plant & Green Roof Research
Winner: Lee R. Skabelund, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Kansas State University
Category: Extensive Commercial/Industrial/Institutional Green Roof
Project: Powderhouse (CALA)
Winner: Recover Green Roofs
Category: Intensive Commercial/Industrial/Institutional Green Roof
Project: Old Chicago Post Office
Category: Interior Green Wall
Project: Hatch 41
Winner: Omni Ecosystems
Category: Small Scale Residential Green Roof
Project: Coastal Cottage
Winner: New York Green Roofs
Category: Urban Agriculture
Project: IGA Duchemin's Urban Rooftop Farm
Winner: Soprema Canada
Category: Chair's Award of Excellence
Project: Outstanding Contribution to the Industry
Winner: Ed Snodgrass, President, Emory Knoll Farms/Green Roof Plants
Category: Civic Award of Excellence
Project: Campaign for Mandatory Green Roof Policy, Cambridge Mass.
Winner: Mothers Out Front
Please join us for the awards ceremony to learn more about these outstanding projects and people on January 19th, 2:30 - 4:30 pm est. You can register here for the webinar, visit our website for more information or read more details below.
Special thanks to our independent, multi-disciplinary awards judges for their contribution to the 2021 Awards:
Jennifer Bousselot, Chair, GRHC Research Committee and members.
Matt Barmore, Chair, GRHC
Jeff Joslin, Chair, GRHC Policy Committee
Chris Brunner, New York Green Roofs
David Yocca, Consultant
Michael Krause, Kandiyo Consulting
Monica Kuhn, Monica E. Kuhn Architect, Inc
Terry Guen, Terry Guen Design Associates
Background
Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC)is a non-profit 501(c)(6) professional industry association working to grow the green roof and wall industry throughout North America since 1999. Our mission is to develop and protect the market by increasing the awareness of the economic, social, and environmental benefits of green roofs, green walls, and other forms of living architecture through education, advocacy, professional development, and celebrations of excellence.
Read The Living Architecture Monitor, our quarterly online magazine that follows industry design, policy, research and technology developments.
Enroll in The Living Architecture Academy, our online training platform which is dedicated to bringing you the best, most up to date professional development resources on design, installation and maintenance practices. Check out our holiday sale, 25% off selected courses, which ends January 15, 2022.
GRHC’s next event is a half day virtual symposium on blue-green roofs to be held February 16, 2022 from 1 to 4:30 pm est. www.greenroofs.org/events.
Details on the 2021 Jeffrey L. Bruce Award of Excellence Winners:
Project: Prairie Plant Research
Winner: Lee R. Skabelund, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Kansas State University
Category: Research Award of Excellence
Lee R. Skabelund, ASLA, Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning at Kansas State University has studied green roofs at Kansas State University since 2010. Lee, in conjunction with students and fellow research colleagues on campus, set up experimental green roofs with different substrate depths to measure plant establishment rates and growth behavior with plants native to Kansas prairies and sedums. This baseline research helps establish knowledge regarding viable plants to be grown on green roofs in the Great Plains region, and beyond. As the lead researcher, Lee’s work establishes methods to engage a major land grant university, students, and faculty colleagues in learning about how green roofs can be established in the challenging climates of the Great Plains.
Project: Powderhouse (CALA)
Winner: Recover Green Roofs
Category: Extensive Commercial/Industrial/Institutional
CALA Somerville, aka Powderhouse, was an active public elementary school until 2004. After sitting vacant for fifteen years, architect and building owner Sebastián Mariscal envisioned the exterior of Powderhouse as a public space full of plants and artwork that can be appreciated by the building’s residents and the greater Somerville community. As it is primarily surrounded by urban and semi-urban landscape, Powderhouse provides an area of public green space that is freely accessible by the community from street level. Read more about this project in the Living Architecture Monitor
Project: Old Chicago Post Office
Winner: Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects
Category: Intensive Commercial/Industrial/Institutional
The Old Chicago Post Office is an iconic piece of architecture getting a second chance at life. Constructed in 1921, the 13-story Art Deco structure was left vacant with no plans for its reuse by the mid-1990’s. Located in a transitioning part of the City, the surrounding area lacked amenities needed to support the influx of nearly 16,000 tenants who would eventually occupy the property. Leveraging the building’s vast roof area as an asset, The Meadow at the Old Chicago Post Office would become the nation’s largest private rooftop garden offering a wide variety of active and passive amenities enabling the rooftop to become a park unto itself. Not only providing benefits to the building’s occupants, the Meadow was designed with sustainability in mind. The richly planted meadows serve as a giant sponge absorbing and filtering more than a quarter-million gallons of stormwater annually from entering the City’s strained storm sewer system.
Project: Hatch 41
Winner: Omni Ecosystems
Category: Interior Green Wall
Hatch 41 is a nonprofit coworking space prioritizing local residents as members featuring a number of green walls and columns throughout the space complemented by art by black and marginalized artists. The biophilic green wall design works double duty by supporting notions of green equity in addition to fulfilling its functional goals. Design consideration was given to sound attenuation in addition to wellness and beauty. The project utilized a modular system inspired by steppe terrace farming for vertical surfaces.
Project: Coastal Cottage
Winner: New York Green Roofs
Category: Small Scale Residential
The Coastal Cottage is located on the south shore of eastern Long Island, New York, adjacent to a large pond that opens up to the Atlantic Ocean. Valued for its natural beauty and biodiversity, the pond is a coastal resource of national and state-wide significance. The green roof atop the first story of this residence is pollinator friendly, helps keep the fish and wildlife in the adjacent waterways protected and, with careful management, helps the area's potato farmers harvest their crops. Luckily for the owners it is also a gorgeous amenity space. Thanks to the thoughtful planting design and integrated outdoor fireplace, connection to nature can be enjoyed by the family through all seasons.
Project: IGA Duchemin's Urban Rooftop Farm
Winner: Soprema Canada
Category: Urban Agriculture
IGA DUCHEMIN is the first grocery store to sell fresh produce harvested directly from their roof. The only means of transportation used to get to the market is the stairs up and down from the roof. All fresh produce sold in the IGA gives nearby residents a local source of extremely fresh produce. Being able to integrate urban greening strategies and green infrastructure solutions contribute to preventing the risks related to certain physical and/or mental diseases. They can also improve lifestyle and increase the well-being of individuals. Vegetated roofs help improve the quality of outdoor air by removing certain contaminants such as dust particles, acting as carbon sinks and oxygenating living environments.
GRHC is also happy to announce the Chair's Award of Excellence Winner which acknowledges outstanding contributions to the development of the green roof and wall industry - Ed Snodgrass. Edmund Snodgrass is president and founder of Emory Knoll Farms/Green Roof Plants, North America’s first nursery specializing in green roof plants and horticultural consulting. Edmund has consulted on projects throughout the US and in England, France, New Zealand, China, Australia, Mexico, Ecuador, Sweden and Morocco. He has published numerous articles and books on green roofs, including the seminal Green Roof Plants.
The 2021 Civic Award of Excellence goes to Mothers Out Front, a volunteer organization based in Cambridge Mass. GRHC is pleased to acknowledge and honour the successful work of Mothers Out Front in their campaign for green roofs in their community. They envisioned a time when buildings in our city would have pollinator gardens, meadows, and farms on their roofs. To achieve this vision, they successfully encouraged the City Council of Cambridge Massachusetts to fully support the revised Green Roofs ordinance that requires vegetative or biosolar – solar panels and vegetation combined – on rooftops of new construction of buildings 25,000+ square feet. Thank you to the leaders of this campaign, Melissa Ludtke, Diane Martin, Kristine Jelstrup, Sharon deVos, and to all the other mothers involved!
From the Living Architecture Monitor
