From the Blog

Taking it to the top: New rooftops bars in NYC

Posted on May 13, 2014 //

by CHRISSY RUTHERFORD, Harper’s Bazaar, May 9, 2014

There’s nothing like hitting a rooftop bar on a warm summer evening for post-work cocktails. We’ve rounded up 4 of the new and newly revamped rooftops to take in the view this season.

Photo: The Skylark Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

Photo: The Skylark
Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

1) The Skylark
For midtown revelers, enjoy your libations with a gorgeous view of the Empire State building and downtown Manhattan.

2) The Roof, Viceroy New York
This upscale rooftop bar has a picturesque view of Central Park, the perfect setting for a sunset Instagram. Look out for cool DJs providing the soundtrack for your Friday and Saturday nights.

3) Top of the Standard, High Line
While this rooftop isn’t new it did just get a serious makeover during the Fall of 2013—so this year if you’re lucky enough to make it to the top, you’ll enjoy the Havana-nights decor, as well as the resident chef Soa Davies’s fine Japanese BBQ from Robataya Grill.

4) The Jane Hotel
Maybe the most exclusive rooftop to hit for a drink this summer— the Jane’s rooftop is finally open to the public, but by appointment only.

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Students can learn to garden in series of University of Maryland-hosted workshops

Posted on May 13, 2014 //

by MADELEINE LIST, The Diamondback, February 20, 2013

Photo: Diana Daisey Source: www.diamondbackonline.com

Photo: Diana Daisey
Source: www.diamondbackonline.com

Most students have to rely on the dining halls or fast food options for food, but some will soon learn how to grow their own.

All it takes are the right tools and techniques and a little bit of guidance. And that’s where Melissa Avery steps in.

Last Tuesday, nearly 20 students gathered at the Apiary for the first in a series of winter workshops about gardening. The Arboretum and Botanical Garden and a collaboration of the university’s Community Gardens hosted the workshop, called Gardening 101. Avery, master gardener in training, instructed attendees on the basics of gardening, and answered questions from students about how to raise their own plants.

Because winter isn’t the season for planting, people interested in gardening have a few weeks before spring to learn the basics, said Yixin Chen, communications manager for the public health garden and sophomore nutritional science major.

“It’s a great way for people who are interested in gardening to realize, ‘Oh yeah, I can do this.’ Having that knowledge is a big first step,” she said.

Georgia Handforth, a co-manager at the Rooftop Community Garden and a senior communications and sociology major, said it’s beneficial for students to learn how to grow their own plants on the campus.

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Corporate roof garden trend gains pace

Posted on May 13, 2014 //

by SARAH COSGROVE, Hosticulture Week, May 2, 2014

Battersea Power Station office and residential roof gardens Image: Andy Sturgeon Source: www.hortweek.com

Battersea Power Station office and residential roof gardens
Image: Andy Sturgeon
Source: www.hortweek.com

Benefits of green roofs increasingly recognised by developers reinvigorating dead spaces, say leading garden designers.

Businesses are increasingly investing in roof gardens on top of corporate buildings to boost their business and benefit staff.

John Lewis opens a roof garden on its Oxford Street store on 3 May to celebrate its 150th anniversary, while garden designer Andy Sturgeon has revealed his designs for three Battersea Power Station office and residential roof gardens.

Construction is underway for the Gillespies-designed Sky Garden on top of London’s “Walkie Talkie” building (20 Fenchurch Street) and at a public roof garden on the new Canary Wharf Crossrail station.

RHS young designer of the year 2013 Tony Woods designed the John Lewis garden, with his company Garden Club London building it. The garden will be open to the public for 15 weeks for a series of events including a World Cup party.

Woods designed around a pop-up juice bar, restaurants and a kitchen and toilet block that had been airlifted onto the roof, where schoolchildren will grow vegetables and salads. Home-grown strawberries, rosemary and lavender will go to the caterers.

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Urban farms in Taipei and Tokyo improve office life

Posted on May 13, 2014 //

by WEN-JAY YING, Untapped Cities, February 25, 2014

Winkler Partners Law Firm office houses one of the first rooftop gardens in Taipei Photo: Wen-Jay Ying Source: www.untappedcities.com

Winkler Partners Law Firm office houses one of the first rooftop gardens in Taipei
Photo: Wen-Jay Ying
Source: www.untappedcities.com

Walking out onto the roof of Winkler Partners Law Firm, arugula and strawberry plants frame the silhouette of buildings and mountain tops that make up the Taipei skyline. “Here’s my business card. That side is how I make money, the other is how I spend money,” says Robin Winkler, an American expat and our host for the day. The card states Winkler Partners Law Firm and the flip side reads Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association. His hobby, Wild at Heart, is the first environmental legal defense fund in Taipei, but his day job isn’t too bad either. The Winkler Partners office houses one of the first rooftop gardens in Taipei.

Robin shows us three rainwater tanks that are used to water plants during droughts. In Taiwan, precipitation varies dramatically and rainwater tanks are essential to help with both flooding and dry spells. The rooftop also has a compost toilet, which surprisingly has no smell. The matter is stored in tubs that will eventually be used to feed their plants.

There are passionfruit trees, strawberries plants, leafy greens, and about forty other edible plants and 300 other species that find a home on the law firm’s rooftop garden. Employees are encouraged to help out with the garden. Robin and his colleagues wanted a space to share information about plants and to make the office a place where you could take a break from… well, the office. It’s their alternative to the common workplace culture and a symbol for jobs with dignity. Ideas for a greener Taiwan extend further than their urban oasis, with intentions to share horticulture with the community through composting workshops and youth education programs.

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Historic hotel likely to become top spot

Posted on May 8, 2014 //

by CLAIRE TYRRELL, The West Australian, May 5, 2014

National Hotel’s Karl Bullers who will be conducting tours of the National Hotel as part of Fremantle Heritage week, people will get access to the rooftop where he plans to open a rooftop bar Photo: Mogens Johansen, The West Australian Source: https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/

National Hotel’s Karl Bullers who will be conducting tours of the National Hotel as part of Fremantle Heritage week, people will get access to the rooftop where he plans to open a rooftop bar
Photo: Mogens Johansen, The West Australian
Source: https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/

It is a million-dollar view of Fremantle not seen by the public for almost a century.

The National Hotel rooftop is one of the few places you can experience 360-degree views of the historic port.

Sailor’s wives used the vantage point in the 19th century to watch for ships arriving, when it was dubbed “widows’ walk”.

Only accessible by ladder, the space was used by select hotel guests as a walkway.

When Karl Bullers took over the hotel in 2010, public access to the iconic space became a priority.

“It was a U-shaped walkway but we filled in the courtyard and made the staircase through the hotel so it is one big open area,” he said.

“We have got planning approval to put a bar and restaurant on the roof.”

Though regular public access to the rooftop is at least a year away, people can get a glimpse of the space on tours during Fremantle Heritage week, which runs from Friday to May 18.

As well as the National Hotel, owners and architects at Fremantle’s Bread in Common and Hougoumont Hotel will explain the process of transforming heritage buildings into modern venues.

“I will talk about history of the building, the challenges I faced getting the venue open again and why it is designed the way it is,” Mr Bullers said.

Fire has ravaged the National Hotel at least twice. Mr Bullers said fire protection was a major challenge of redesigning the rooftop.

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Hedge two-way mirror walkabout, Metropolitan Museum, New York – review

Posted on May 8, 2014 //

by Ariella Budick, Financial Times, May 5, 2014

'Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout' sits on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum in New York Photo: Hyle Skopitz Source: www.ft.com

‘Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout’ sits on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum in New York
Photo: Hyle Skopitz
Source: www.ft.com

A seriously charming and richly allusive installation has appeared on the roof of the Met

The Metropolitan Museum’s remote rooftop garden has always offered savvy visitors respite from hall after hall of sublime majesty. Right now, it opens on to an artificial-grass oasis that hovers like a magic carpet above the edge of Central Park. Lawn chairs are temptingly scattered about. The view beckons. And off to one side, a mirrored pavilion perches on its glowing patch of green, catching the kaleidoscopic tumult of the city and playfully casting it back.

Dan Graham collaborated with landscape architect Günther Vogt to transform the Met’s severe space into “Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout”, a seriously charming funhouse. It’s a mind-bending piece of walk-in sculpture, a two-chambered bubble of mirrored glass and steel that invites viewers to glimpse themselves in its reflective surfaces. However we look at it, we see ourselves askew – here, sleekly thin; there, grotesquely fat, mixed up with the people on the other side of the transparent wall and a flickering melange of sky, leaves, buildings and passing clouds.

Graham’s rooftop pavilion teems with allusions. It invokes, first of all, the extravagantly ornamental structures – faux Greek temples, mock gothic ruins – designed as picturesque points of interest in 18th-century English gardens. At Stowe, Lord Cobham hid a “Temple of Ancient Virtue” among the vegetation, honouring the greatest Greeks and expressing his yearning for Hellenic antiquity. Graham has fallen under a more modern version of the neoclassical spell: he finds inspiration in the stripped-down austerity of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, which he admires both because it was always meant to be temporary, and because it effectively blends vegetation and reflective glass.

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