Author: Caroline Dolan

GREEN ROOFS ARE NOT NEW: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (c. 500 B.C.) were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and an early version of a green roof, with gardens cascading over scone pillars and roofs waterproofed with tar and reeds. Green, or sod, roofs have been around for centuries, ­think “Vikings” in Scandinavia and the sod roofs of American settlers on the Great Plains. A precursor for the modern green roof was unveiled in 1867 at the World Expo in Paris featuring a waterproofing and drainage system. The 1920s and the 1930s yielded innovations by Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalro, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Their installation has increasingly expanded in Germany as practitioners improved the technology to use on existing and new buildings to proactively reduce stormwater runoff due to development.

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities defines a green roof system as an “extension of the existing roof which involves, at a minimum, high-quality waterproofing, root repellent system, drainage system, filter cloth, a lightweight growing medium, and plants.” Basically, a roof that is covered or partially covered in plants.

Common concerns about green roofs typically focus on integrity, maintenance, and cost. Although any type of roof can leak if not properly installed, green roofs installed by experienced contrac­tors are much less likely to leak. While it is true that the first cost of a green roof installation, either for a new or existing building, can initially be higher than that of a typical single-ply membrane roof, the costs for a well-designed and site-appropriate green roof are often balanced by its long-term energy savings and the fact that the green roof will extend the life of the roof membrane.

Every green roof is unique, not only to the building and space it defines, but also to the local climate, and proposed use offering many benefits associated with such an installation. The most widely acknowledged ones are associated with environmental sustainability-specifically, stormwater management, water conservation, air quality, and mitigation of the heat island effect in dense urban settings. In addition to its benefit as an amenity, a green roof can also improve building performance through better mechanical performance and more efficient PV systems, as well as reduce acoustical transmission through roof assemblies.

The design of a green roof provides a blank canvas upon which to introduce biodiversity while contributing to the improved health and wellbeing of users. Many hospitals now include healing gardens on accessible, visible roofs because they can have such a positive impact on patient recovery. In the right setting, it can also serve as an effective educational tool, adding to its justification on new and existing school buildings.

As a practitioner of sustainable design promoting the responsi­ble use and conservation of natural resources, HMFH has had opportunities to leverage this expertise by helping three Massa­chusetts schools—Saugus Middle High School, Josiah Quincy Upper School, and Bristol County Agricultural High School­—make smart decisions that reduced energy and water use and enhanced learning while supporting the health and wellbeing of all users. Each school had different reasons for choosing green roofs.

Saugus Middle High School in Saugus, Mass., sited less than 300 feet from a busy six-lane highway, supports progressive education in grades 6 to 12 and celebrates the town’s rich history of innovation. The $160.7-million school brings together 1,360 students in a 271,000-square-foot, STEAM-driven complex outfitted for exploratory learning and innovation.

Inspired by the Saugus River’s fundamental role in the town’s history, the new school incorporates multiple water conservation strategies. A stormwater collection and reuse system combined with the green roof slows stormwater runoff, saving more than 1.5 million gallons of water annually and leading to Saugus becoming the first project state-funded to reach the highest level of LEED certification, Platinum. In tandem with the environmental benefits, the 12,700-square-foot third-floor green roof provides program space for science curriculum-based learning, yoga, and mindfulness classes. The roofscape is centrally located and easily accessed by students and faculty. The exterior door to the outdoor classroom is also adjacent to the third-floor classroom devoted to medically fragile students, offering chose with limited mobility more opportunity to be outdoors.

Currently under construction, the $146.8-million Josiah Quincy Upper School in Boston is a 175,000-square-foot, six­-story facility char will accommodate 650 students in grades 6 through 12 when it opens for the 2024-2025 academic year. The location of the one-acre site, near the intersection of the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90) and I-93, presented a different type of challenge than Saugus or Bristol Aggie. Combined, the two highways carry about 300,000 vehicles per weekday through the city, resulting in transportation-related air pollution.

During the design process, the project ream and stakeholders placed a high priority on fitting a robust educational program on a small, urban site and creating spaces that advance health, wellbeing, and equity. Because no other outdoor space was possible on the site, a large portion of the roof will serve as an outdoor classroom and physical activity area featuring walking paths and native species gardens. An added benefit of the roof garden is the access to fresher air high above street level, while the plants also actively remove pollutants from the air. Based on the area of vegetation and native plantings, the green roof project will achieve a credit in LEED for restoring natural habitat. Planned PV canopies have been deleted due to budget constraints bur are possible to add back if funds become available.

While every green roof is unique to its intended purpose, size, local climate, budget, and maintenance constraints, successful installations are usually the product of an interdisciplinary team effort by an architect; structural, civil (for stormwater), and mechanical/electrical/plumbing engineers; landscape archi­tect; botanist; and possibly irrigation specialist. State and mu­nicipal agencies can be important allies because of the overlap­ping trades involved and as more political advocates press for features such as this to increase climate resiliency.

Green roofs provide many benefits, from increasing a roofs lifespan, promoting biodiversity, and improving building energy performance to improving the efficiency of solar photovoltaic systems. While directly benefitting the school community, green roofs are also benefitting the broader community by cooling the immediate environment and reducing storm water runoff. Designing green roofs for schools offers even more opportunity: they can enhance the learning experience, improve health and wellness, and connect with a school’s curriculum and program goals.

Motivation, mission, and means were the Town of Weymouth’s springboard for planning and constructing the Maria Weston Chapman Middle School, whose doors opened to 1,470 students in grades 6, 7, and 8 on September 6, 2022. The $164.2 million facility replaced the outdated Chapman School on the same site, and at 252,170 square feet, it is now the largest middle school in Massachusetts. Robert Hedlund, Weymouth’s mayor, declared it “The most significant capital project that the Town has ever undertaken in its history.”

The project began in April 2015, when the town submitted a statement of interest to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). In November 2016, the MSBA board invited Weymouth to conduct a feasibility study. After hiring HMFH Architects as the project designer and Hill International as project manager, the $1 million study commenced and ultimately presented a solid rationale for building a new facility instead of renovating the existing one.

With project goals and objectives firmly in place, schematic design began in 2018. The “New Chapman” team — the Weymouth School Building Committee, HMFH, and Hill — asked hard questions: How can a very large school be made welcoming to students? And how can it foster smaller learning communities, encourage meaningful collaboration among staff and students, and increase social-emotional wellness for its users?

In response to concerns over the size of the school, educational planning and academic teaming spaces were structured to form concentric rings of support around each student. The space organization strategy progressed from the whole school to grade levels, and then to smaller academic neighborhoods. The administrative structure within each neighborhood consists of multiple teams and classrooms. The 7^th and 8^th grades have two teams with five educators in each neighborhood focused on five courses of study. Grade 6 has ten small teams in the neighborhood to compensate for the transition from elementary to middle school and a change in curriculum. The organizational strategy around teams provides equity and a “home-base” identity for all students. It is also where they spend much of their school day and is the central planning unit for the whole school.

The second ring of support pairs two teams in a neighborhood, providing expanded resources, planning and supervision. The neighborhoods are grouped around a collaborative area consisting of a double height presentation space where students can share their ideas and an adjacent outdoor classroom for messy work and learning in nature.

Creating an academic environment that checked all the boxes for fostering students’ academic, physical, social, and emotional well-being and met MSBA’s and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s requirements was the team’s highest priority.

As a feeder for Weymouth High School’s robust career and technical education programs, Chapman’s curriculum and layout are centered around unique “exploratories” — elective tracks that focus on modern, STEAM-driven paths in career tech, ranging from robotics and fabrication to culinary arts and broadcast media. Specialized lab spaces on each floor support this exploration and act as links between each of the classroom wings and the 9,500-square-foot “Town Square” cafeteria.

Centrally located and bracketed by the three academic wings and the gymnasium, the Town Square was described by John Sullivan, chair of the Weymouth School Committee as “The crossroads of the school, and the place where students will break bread together and build community.” This pivotal space, along with the gymnasium, accommodates public use of the school after hours. A state-of-the-art, 850-seat auditorium serves the middle school’s active drama program as well as high school and community theater groups. The new building’s design also provides for additional public uses; a 755-square-foot community wellness suite, which has a separate entrance, adds to the 1,000 square feet allotted to the nurse-staffed medical suite.

Physical fitness is fundamental to the health and wellbeing of both mind and body, and Chapman Middle School’s design amplifies opportunities for exercise from the outside in, starting with a 0.5-mile fitness loop encircling the 15.87-acre site. Along the fitness loop are three exercise stations and two structured fitness areas, one of which features a multi-game court, the other created according to Universal Design principles. All facilities are open for use by the community. Indoors, the 18,414-square-foot physical education wing — the only portion of the old school that was retained and repurposed — encompasses an 11,435-square-foot gymnasium, a fitness studio with climbing wall, weight room, and ancillary space.

Close attention was paid to the curriculum’s special education component, with significantly more space than the original facility dedicated to these offerings and supports, encompassing a variety of dedicated rooms interspersed throughout the building on both floors. The goal of these spaces was to provide varying levels of support for the children within the program, and their size, configuration, and location promotes flexibility and heightens comfort. There are small and large group rooms, two de-escalation rooms, physical and occupational therapy, sensory and transition rooms, and dedicated spaces for a communication enhancement program, life skills learning, social-emotional learning, academic support, and an administrative suite.

Additional means of support and grade level identity were realized through the use of color: Each of the three academic wings was assigned a different color per floor. Further characterizing each wing is a unique, bold, and colorful 12-foot by 25-foot graphic defining a grade theme: empathy for 6^th grade, diversity for 7^th grade, and inclusion for 8^th grade.

The architecture itself sparks a sense of wonder through soaring 30-foot-high spaces with second-floor pedestrian walkways open to the Town Square, and a view into exploratory labs that face it. As important as natural light is to productivity and well-being, the design team recognized that it can also be problematic. To counter glare on teaching surfaces, exterior windows have fixed sunscreens tailored to each solar orientation.

More than 50 different contractors, companies and consultants were a part of the new Chapman Middle School project.  “It is the best team I have ever been a part of,” said Ted Langill, chair of the Maria Chapman Middle School Building Committee. “This was an enormous project, with many obstacles, that had to be completed under a tight deadline. There was little room for error. Hill, HMFH Architects and [construction manager] BOND Building Construction were outstanding in managing this project and achieving all our goals.”