Green roofs

Vegetated roofs for buildings

Vegetated roofs offer the perfect solution to one of the main environmental challenges of the 21st century: the lack of green spaces in cities and large urban areas. This type of green system consists of covering the roof of a building with vegetation. For this reason, vegetated roofs are also known as green roofs, green rooftops or living roofs.

Vegetated roofs bring nature back onto the top of a building, becoming a distinctive feature for bioconstruction projects where aesthetics and the efficient use of the planet’s resources come together. Integrating vegetation and plants into building roofs is a promising and effective idea. Thanks to green roofs, we not only create more colourful urban landscapes, but we also make sustainable urban development possible.

Benefits of green roofs

The main benefit of vegetated roofs is that buildings that use them can become more self-sufficient by using the vegetation covering the rooftop or roof to reduce energy consumption. In fact, a green roof offers so many energy-related benefits that it is considered an intelligent and sustainable construction system.

Vegetated roofs provide numerous economic, social and environmental advantages:

• Economic benefits: green roofs offer significant savings because, by improving the building’s thermal performance, the building uses less energy to remain comfortable. It has also been proven that vegetated roofs can triple the lifespan of rooftops, avoiding future repair costs.
• Social benefits: green roofs improve the wellbeing of the people living in the building, as they can be designed as community gardens, leisure areas or urban farming spaces. In addition, the roof significantly reduces street noise and the usable green space has a positive impact on the building’s value.
• Environmental benefits: the plants on green roofs clean the air we breathe by filtering heavy metals and generating oxygen. We should also remember that they help protect biodiversity, reduce city temperatures and mitigate the Urban Heat Island effect.

In short, the benefits and advantages of a vegetated roof apply to the planet, to people and to other living beings. Furthermore, prolonged use of these systems improves the building’s lifespan and energy balance.

Types of vegetated roofs

Today, there are 4 types of green roofs:

Extensive green roofs. Especially suitable for roofs or rooftops with difficult access or sloped surfaces. Lightweight or ultra-light extensive systems can be integrated depending on rainwater retention, biodiversity potential and other factors.

Intensive green roofs. These are the most commonly used to design domestic roof gardens on rooftops or roofs of any building. They are more accessible to the public and their main characteristic is filtering and purifying urban air and rainwater.

Semi-intensive green roofs. The ideal option for social or recreational use. They are mainly characterised by a greater variety of vegetation, primarily to make them more visually striking.

Biodiverse roofs. Specifically designed to create a particular habitat that naturally attracts certain types of plant species, insects and birds. For this reason, this roof type requires the least human interaction.

Why are green roofs important?

Vegetated roofs, also known as green roofs, are more than just a good energy-saving system. Green roofs are the perfect response to the main needs caused by our unhealthy and unsustainable lifestyle. Factories and vehicles consume much of the oxygen and pollute the atmosphere, especially in urban centres. That’s why integrating plants wherever possible (green facades, vegetated roofs, etc.) is the best way to improve the polluted climate of cities.

This idea is essential to combat carbon dioxide emissions, global warming and climate change. With green roofs, rooftops become the lungs of our cities.