Living Roofs

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve kept notebooks on different things I researched for The Energy Crusades. I’m starting to pull out that research so I can share it here. It’s fun going back into all of my notes and drawings, pictures from magazines, pictures of various technical gadgets, and just whatever else I used to fuel my imagination.

The first thing I came across was living roofs. Almost all of the structures in my novel have them, and I wish I had one too. This is what a typical house would look like in the future, as I imagined it:

(image taken from: http://solarious.wordpress.com/)

I also came across an article (back in 2009) on the California Science Academy in San Francisco. Please check out their website if you have time. The building is amazing and what I imagine the University buildings look like in The Energy Crusades. Look at this living roof:

I think it’s beautiful. I’m intrigued by sustainable architecture and the building uses recycled denim as insulation:

How cool is that? I bet we’ve all thrown out a pair of jeans or two, and now we can use it to insulate our buildings.

I’ll share more stuff soon.