A Green Toupe for Beirut?

This photomontage of Beirut with a green forest demonstrates how mad our cities would look if we used rooftops for more than just the lift overruns. Wassim Melki of StudioInvisible put together the montage, which forms part of a large, genuine proposal for the dense city.

"Most conventional rooftop gardens are very complex," he explained. "They require a specific type of insulation and drainage, and a study should be conducted on the roof slab and how much weight it could support. Since many of the existing buildings are more than 50 years old, we are suggesting putting the trees in relatively large pots." 

Melki adds that there is little if not no space in the city for creating new public green spaces, and "it's almost impossible to plant on the sidewalks or at the side of the roads". The solution is to take to the rooftops, argues the architect, and use the roofs of the 18,500 buildings in the city that are currently vacant. Says Melki: "If only one tree is planted on each, that's 18,500 more trees: which is the equivalent of Central Park in New York."

Read more at wired.