Roofscapes Studio (Tim Cousin+Olivier Faber+Eytan Levi)
¿How can roofs allow our cities to enter a new climactic era?
Designed for the 2021 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism titled “Building the Resilient City,” our exhibition “Head in the Clouds” offers a tactical solution for the future of urban centers. Through this work, Roofscapes aims to vegetalize and render accessible the roofs of European urban centers to fight the lack of outdoor spaces in cities, biodiversity loss, and urban heat island effects.
Green roofs are nice. But in a city like Paris, two out of three buildings are covered by a pitched roof. Roofscapes is among those who see this surface as an incredible opportunity to improve well-being, living together and urban resilience.
Roofscapes has developed a construction strategy that can be adapted to each roof configuration by replicating certain principles throughout the city. The modularity of the system of prefabricated wooden platforms allows it to adjust to the different dimensions and spans of the roofs. The loads of these modules are transmitted vertically to the thick masonry load-bearing walls that characterize pre-war European centers; these walls are largely oversized, providing the structural capacity to support new roof surfaces.
Authors: Roofscapes Studio (Tim Cousin+Olivier Faber+Eytan Levi).
Website: www.roofscapes.studio
Location: Paris, France.
Year: 2021
Competition: Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2021.
Prize: Winner of call for proposal.