What's new on top
Bus stop’s green roof
Bauder
An industrial-strength swing at the bus stop off those steel cantilevers? It’s a start. But there’s only so long you can swing without getting bored and if you are waiting for the D7 to Stratford as I frequently have to do you would definitely tire of being pendular. May I suggest a slide, roundabout, see-saw and perhaps even a trampoline? This Norfolk Association of Architects award-winning bus shelter for the University of East Anglia also has a Bauder green roof installed, so you can shape some sedum in the interim.
Decra Noxite tiles
Icopal
You better work, roof! For centuries, you kicked back, simply content to insulate a property and curtail water ingress. Oh, sure, your thatch did provide a micro-habitat for birds and insects – but that wasn’t on purpose so it hardly counts. But nowadays, if you aren’t generating power or growing shrubs, we need to know why. Another option is scrubbing NO2 and NO particles from the air, such as these go-getting tiles at Liscard Primary in the Wirral. Pull your NOx up, roof: simply keeping the rain out is no longer an option!
Green roof substrate guide
Boughton
Landscaping industry supplier Boughton has released some info about which substrate to use for various ‘green roofs’ – everything from ‘extra-light’ mixes where weight is an issue through to ‘podium green’, where you are thinking about putting a hydrangea up top. And shown is the Georgia O’Keeffe Memorial Rock and Log Garden which can also presumably take ‘intensive’ substrate since there is a lorry-load of buffalo skulls and some aloe vera due for delivery Wednesday. Don’t forget your poncho.
Roofing refurb
Aggregate Industries
Who can solve the mystery of Ranksborough Hall, Rutland? Why do so many wheelie-bins assemble outside the property every Tuesday? [Bin day? – Ed] How did Aggregate Industries and Rutland Roofing complete the entire job fitting Bradstone Cotswold roofing tiles within a mere six months? How did they make it look like the slate tiles they took off? How did all the scaffolding get round the gables? Where is Rutland anyway? Why all the questions?
Slate roof tiles
Cupa Pizarras
Sign up to our intensive week-long immersive Northern Expressionist Self-Help Workshop in Cambridgeshire, where you can creatively explore post-millennial tension in the midst of pancake-flat farmland. Workshops include: Munch: The Primal Scream and Brexit-terror; Egon Schiele: weight gain in the face of modern existential nausea; All That Glisters: Klimt, the superficiality of selfies and overcoming Instagram addiction. Special curly bird deal on curved roof dwellings fitted with anthroposophical hand-cut slate tiles from Cupa Pizarras.
Roof refurb
Sarnafil
Saudi Arabia is perfectly stable! Sure, the UK might be keeping its self-defence forces in fine fettle and the odd multi-billion dollar asset may have gone missing but it’s business as usual. Still, if political tension does ever create problems getting to Mecca, the UK’s faithful may consider Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, as a pop-up alternative destination. Denys Lasdun’s domey scallop detailing would surely make a great temporary substitute. And recent work by Cullinan Studio with Sarnafil on the roof means the college is ready to receive pilgrims.
Rooflight
Vision AGI
What makes a rooflight a roof? Or, to put it another way, what does it take for a lowly sky window to make it from our ‘Doors, windows and ironmongery’ section into the vaunted ‘Roofing’ arena? As you will see, dimensionality helps. This 12m by 6m Vision AGI for Heatherwick creation has a ‘gridshell’ and is billed as a ‘fully self-supporting roof’. That’s the structural rationale – the only question that remains is whether or not being shaped like an almond smoothes the entry’s passage from one definition to the other.
Brookhurst clay roof tiles
Sahtas UK
How long are you going to be standing there with that thing in front of your face when you could be THROWING THE BALL FOR ME? You’ve been muttering and walking backwards and fiddling and walking backwards for about half an hour when there are BALLS TO BE THROWN! Look how disappointed and expectant I am. HOW CAN YOU TURN ME DOWN? Oh, lord, now you are bragging to your neighbour about these Brookhurst handmade clay roof tiles from Sahtas and your barn built in 1914 but WHEN ARE YOU GONNA THROW THE BALL?!