Sustainability Awareness Week 2020: Green Roof Virtual Tour

Sustainability Awareness Week 2020: Green Roof Virtual Tour

Sustainability is a key component of FIT’s mission and is embedded in the college’s curriculum and operations. During virtual Sustainability Awareness Week, from October 5 to 9, 2020, we invited our community to learn about recent innovations from leaders in the industry, experience FIT’s efforts to make a positive impact on the earth, and discover new ways to live with a smaller footprint.

From the street level, FIT’s imposing brutalist buildings are a signature of New York City’s urban landscape. Look at FIT from above, and a greener picture emerges. Nearly an acre of green roofs, made up of hardy succulents in the genus Sedum, offer numerous environmental benefits. They insulate the buildings, improve air quality, help cool the neighborhood, and absorb rainfall, mitigating flooding in the city’s sewers during storms. Also, atop the Shirley Goodman Resource Center, solar panels provide electricity for the grid.

To create FIT’s green roofs, sedum plants, which are hardy succulents that require little watering or maintenance, were installed on the roof in large trays.

Green roofs do all of the following: help insulate the buildings, reducing the need for heating and air conditioning; absorb carbon dioxide, improving air quality and lessening the college’s carbon footprint; reduce the heat island effect—the reason New York City is a few degrees warmer than its environs—making FIT’s climate more livable; soak up water during heavy rainfall that would otherwise flood the city’s sewers, thus preventing untreated sewage from flowing into the Hudson and East rivers.

Fashion Institute of Technology

2020-10-05

10:08

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