Book review: New York City Rooftop Gardens

Some time ago I'm with my research on the architectural picture book New York City Rooftop Gardens from Charles de Vaivre from teNeues encountered. Recently, the picture book is now on my desk and I had the last few days time to devote myself to the beautiful work more closely.

The roofs of New York are in such a quantity with the equivalent of 20% of urban total. Compared with other major U.S. cities, there are in New York, a relatively large number of unused roof space.

Exactly this field is devoted to picture book New York City Rooftop Gardens . The book collects nearly 220 pages on a variety of examples of roof gardens and green uses of the metropolis. The individual gardens are each portrayed with good and expressive photographs and a brief textual synopsis presented (multilingual).

It is a remarkable compilation of examples. The collection shows not only that there are a lot of good architecture and design forms of private roof gardens, but also that in the city a more open space category is located outside the classical field of view of architecture, city planning, on the streets of New York. This kind of open and green space is in most cases little or no attention paid. This is especially evident that the use of the roofs goes far beyond the purely private garden. It creates public space as an extension of a museum, sports turf areas or areas for agricultural production on the roofs of the city.