Toronto — The 2004 Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC) 2004 Awards of Excellence winners were recently announced by Steven Peck, Executive Director of GRHC. The six awards, honoring the best in green roof design, were presented at the GRHC's second annual Greening Rooftops for Sustainable Communities Conference in Portland, Ore., on June 3, 2004. Winners include:

Intensive Residential - Solaire Building, Battery Park City - Lower Manhattan, New York. Award Recipient - Balmori Associates Inc. (design firm - New York and New Haven, Conn.); Architects of Record - Cesar Pelli and Associates; Owner - Albanese Development Corp.

The Solaire incorporates a 5,000-square-foot terrace (intensive) green roof on the 19th floor and a 4,800-square-foot (extensive) green roof on the 28th floor. It is planted with self-sustaining perennial shrubs and bamboos, over American Hydrotech waterproofing membrane.

Extensive Residential - Island House, Thousand Islands - St. Lawrence River, east of Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Award Recipient - Shim-Sutcliffe Architects (Toronto, Ontario); Green Roof Designer - Marie-Ann Boivin Soprema Canada (Quebec City); Green Roof Landscape Contractor - Top Nature (Montreal, Quebec); Structural Engineer - Blackwell Engineering, Mechanical Engineers -Toews Systems Design, Contractor- Michael Sheedy & Mark Peabody.

Island House is a single-family home with upper and lower roofs using a Sopranature green roof system occupying a total of 1,700 square feet.

Intensive Industrial/Commercial - Soldier Field at N. Burnham Park Redevelopment, Chicago. Award Recipient - Jeffery L. Bruce & Co. (North Kansas City) in association with Peter Lindsay Schaudt Landscape Architecture

Inc. (Chicago); Client - Chicago Bears and the Chicago Parks District; Architects - Wood + Zapata (New York) with Dirk Lohan, Lohan Caprile Goettsch Architects (Chicago); Civil Engineers - V3 Consultants (Chicago); Structural Engineers -Thornton-Tomasetti, Engineers.

A new rooftop park was created along the Chicago waterfront, covering five and a half acres on a sloped parking garage roof at Soldier Field.

Extensive Industrial Commercial - Ford Dearborn Assembly Plant, Dearborn, Mich. Award Recipients - William McDonough + Partners(Charlottesville, Va.) and ARCADIS; Client - Ford Motor Co.; Construction Manager, Walbridge Aldinger; Green Roof Consultant XeroFlor America; Vegetation Supplier Hortech Inc. & Walters Gardens (Zeeland, Mich.).

The Ford plant's green roof is the largest green roof in the world recognized by Guinness World Records measuring 454,000 square feet (10.4 acres). A XeroFlor system was selected. Researchers at Michigan State University in the Department of Crop and Soil Science were consulted to research the vegetation. The roofing membrane was provided by Siplast.

Intensive Institutional - Oaklyn Branch Library, Evansville, Ind. Award Recipients - Roofscapes; Architect-William Brown, Veazey Parrott Durkin and Shoulders (Indianapolis); Landscape Architect - Storrow Kinsella Associates (Indianapolis).

This single-story library with a publicly accessible 17,250-square-foot green roof is vegetated to reproduce a “mesic meadow” prairie plant community.

Extensive Institutional - Life Expression Wellness Center, Sugar Loaf, Pa.

Award Recipients - Roofscapes; ArchitecVan der Ryn Architects (Sausalito, Calif.); Green Roof Designer - Roofscapes (Philadelphia); Green Roof Installer - David Bros. Landscape (Worcester, Pa.); Owner - Ron and Joanne Gallagher.

This is a 6,000-square-foot green roof installed on a chiropractic center. It is noteworthy project for being the steepest pitched green roof in North America.

For more information, visit www.greenroofs.org.