Honor Award
Rooftop Haven for Urban Agriculture
Chicago USA
Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, Chicago USA
Client: Gary Comer Youth Center
Close Me!Elevated Courtyard—This second-story garden helped children grow 1,000 pounds of vegetables last year.
Download Hi-Res ImagePhoto: Scott Shigley
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Close Me!Plan Diagram — The sleek, graphic design of the planting rows and skylights turns a working vegetable garden into a place of beauty.
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Close Me!Garden Stripes — Linear strips of recycled tire pavers are the framework for the garden and delineate the geometry of the corridor’s viewing windows.
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Close Me!Gardening as Curriculum — Structured programs for children showcase the ability for gardens to provide an array of educational opportunities.
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Close Me!Farm to Fork—This working garden provides vegetables for local restaurants, enhances collaboration with the center’s café and helps teach basic business skills.
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Close Me!Planting Time—Vegetables and fruits cultivated in the garden are nurtured using tools designed specially for the roof's 18 foot soil depth.
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Close Me!Viewing Garden—Students and administrators benefit from views of the garden from within the center as they move from class to class.
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Close Me!Context—Lodged between a major roadway and residential neighborhood, the center has become a beacon for the entire neighborhood.
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Close Me!Safe Haven — Surrounded by walls on four sides and protected from the street, the second-floor roof garden is a safe, serene place.
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Project Statement
The Gary Comer Youth Center Roof Garden is an after-school learning space for youth and seniors in a neighborhood with little access to safe outdoor environments. Last year alone, it produced over 1,000 pounds of organic food used by students, local restaurants and the center's café. Sleek and graphic, it turns the typical working vegetable garden into a place of beauty and respite.
Project Narrative
—2010 Professional Awards Jury
Located in Chicago's Grand Crossing neighborhood, the Gary Comer Youth Center offers a safe, welcoming after-school space for indoor activity. Its 8,160-square-foot green roof is a model for using traditionally underutilized space for urban agriculture and exceptional in its balance of an aesthetic vision with practical needs. The garden provides the crowning touch to an award-winning building recognized for its bold architecture.
The landscape architect worked closely with the architect and donor to develop a vision for a green roof to include a flower and working vegetable garden, and suggested that the center employ a full-time garden manager to enhance educational program development and manage maintenance. The result is a garden used in extremely creative ways for horticultural learning, environmental awareness, and food production.
While reducing climate control costs and providing an outdoor classroom, the green roof is able to withstand enthusiastic children digging for potatoes and carrots with garden tools. Soils 18–24 inches deep allow for viable food production, including cabbage, sunflowers, carrots, lettuce and strawberries. Sharp differences between ground temperatures and those on the roof mean that the rooftop is in a different climate zone and can be utilized throughout the winter. The resulting garden, only three years old, is still evolving.
Located on the second floor over the center's gymnasium, the garden is surrounded by the circulation corridor and classrooms of the third floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows transform this working garden into a highly graphic viewing garden as students move from one classroom to another. Plastic lumber made from recycled milk containers forms pathways within the garden that align with the courtyard garden's window frames. Metal circles scattered throughout the garden serve as elements of artistic expression even as they function as skylights, bringing outdoor illumination to the building's gymnasium and café below.
Project Resources
Landscape Architect
Hoerr Schaudt, Landscape Architects
Peter Lindsay Schaudt, FASLA, Partner
Architect
John Ronan Architect
John Ronan, Principal
Structural Engineer
Arup
Nancy Hamilton, Principal
Garden Manager
Gary Comer Youth Center
Marjorie Hess, Garden Manager
Irrigation Design
ICON
Eric Davis
Landscape Contractor
Walsh Landscape Construction, Inc.
General Contractor
W.E. O’Neil Construction Co.