HUNDERTWASSER'S GRASS ROOFS
(Page 2 of 3)
March/April 1978
By the Mother Earth News editors
At the same time, household humus toilets -composting toilets-provide new soil for the roof's vegetation. This house does not pollute the environment. Instead, it transforms liquid and solid waste on the spot into pure water and humus. This dwelling is a part of nature.
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THE HANGING TOWER GARDENS
In this "high meadow house" or "woodland skyscraper", the houses are hanging underneath the meadows. When you look out your windows, you can see other hanging woodlands below.
Why should only people be piled up in stories in the cities? It is quite feasible to have woodlands, meadows, parks, gardens, and other green spaces in the center of towns too ... if you arrange them in floors above each other.
Such an arrangement is less expensive than you think. Although it is more expensive to construct buildings of this kind, in reality they become much less expensive than the skyscraper city housing that we now build.
How? Start by deducting the modern, sterile, concrete city's bills for bad health, pollution and the ills it brings, doctors, druggists, and psychiatrists. There will be less suicides in a city of tower gardens. Its residents will spend less for winter fuel and summer air conditioning. They will spend less for plumbing and sewage, artificial purification plants, and garbage disposal when their water is cleaned naturally on their own roofs and their solid waste is processed in composting toilets.
The people who live in tower gardens will spend less for roof repairs. They will save money on vacuum cleaners because there will be less dust in the air. They will not spend as much on vacations because it will be more fun to stay home. There will be more oxygen in the city's air if its roofs are turned into parklands. The people who live there will save money by picking apples off their own roofs. Their homes will be quieter and will shield them from radiation.
There will be more happiness and beauty in such a city. Birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and other wildlife will return to the center of these towns, settle on your terrace, and become your neighbors. Cows, sheep, and other animals can be brought in to graze the roofs. You will have the satisfaction of cultivating a garden on your own roof ... or letting your vegetation "run wild".
Compare all this with life in the average sterile modern city built of concrete.
IVAN TARULEVICZ'S GRASS ROOF HOUSE IN NEW ZEALAND
When in New Zealand, I met the architect Ivan Tarulevicz, who has completed a most interesting house, it is situated on an inlet and is a beautiful wooden building. Its roof is topped with a rubber sheet one millimeter thick that is covered by 10 centimeters of soil.
The earth on the roof was sprayed with a mixture of liquid fertilizer and grass seed. Result: A wonderful lawn has grown on top of the house and, from time to time, sheep come to graze on it.
