Comment of the Holcim Awards 2005 Jury for Latin America
The conceptual project aimed at improving urban policy is refreshingly innovative in proposing roof gardens throughout the city. Highly commended is the ambition to improve the conditions of individual buildings as well as more extensive environmental problems at a metropolitan scale.
Benefits for the buildings include a substantial improvement of the energy efficiency of housing, as well as increased comfort due to optimized thermal insulation. Benefits for the city include mitigation of urban flooding as a result of water retention as well as the reduction of heat islands due to vegetal transpiration.
At a world scale, such measures have a positive influence in that they help to reduce global warming both by minimizing the consumption of fossil energy for heating and by controlling CO2 during plant growth.
Important is that the proposal can be applied equally to existing and new buildings. A beneficial social component of the work is that is promises the potential of creating new jobs in the region for construction and maintenance, but is not necessarily limited to this context.
Not only demonstrating how the overall material quality of the city can be ameliorated, the project presents an ecologically responsible vision for large urban conglomerations.