Sustainable rooftops : public schools and educational facilities in Beirut

Abstract

As cities are growing today, various problems are appearing and created by this growth; and Beirut is no exception. The main outcome of this is investments in land for construction, which leads to lack of open spaces and especially green spaces. Beirut is suffering from the over crowdedness of people and buildings and most importantly the lack of green spaces. On the other hand, rooftops are usually large empty spaces that resemble mostly to the empty lots before the construction of their respective buildings, so they are an urban layer that can make up for the lack of open spaces in the city, not to mention that they are also exposed directly to the sunlight. Therefore, rooftops present an important potential in solving some of the problems created by the city growth, by being transformed into what we call “green” rooftops. This type of rooftop deals with two alternatives, according to research, either urban agriculture or energy generation. This research builds on a review of these two alternatives of “green” rooftop focusing on vegetated roof and its impacts on the community and the city and not only on the building itself. This research examines the specificities of urban agriculture for the city, explaining how, according to literature, this alternative can be applied, and why rooftops are an important asset for it. In addition, schools and educational facilities also present an important potential in this research; these facilities are considered a meeting point for various stakeholders in society such as students and instructors themselves, the parents, the neighboring buildings and the community. Also, their rooftops are mostly empty and not used for anything. In order to study the role of schools’ rooftops in becoming “green”, this research dives deeper into the school itself (its history, educational program, relation to the community, etc.) and its context. To do this, different schools are chosen for the study of this research, having different aspects, profiles and of course context. Accordingly, the vegetated roof is assigned to the schools’ rooftops; and each roof is designed in a way to serve as a prototype for other similar schools.