On Friday, July 29th, Superbloom joined Colorado design and green infrastructure professionals to feature local projects at the Denver Mile High Green Roof Symposium! The symposium was co-hosted jointly by Colorado State University and the University of Colorado Denver at the Colorado Living Architecture Regional Academic Center of Excellence.
The event featured the latest research in green roof applications for the semiarid west. Keynote speaker Bruce Dvorak, MLA, spoke on the topic of selecting appropriate green roof plants from his recent book Ecoregional Green Roofs, winner of an ASLA Honor Award for Research in 2021. The event was held at the amazing new #Terra Building at CSU Spur Campus, featuring its own green roof!
Superbloom Principal Stacy Passmore discussed our green roof project at the new Populus Hotel in Downtown Denver, currently under construction. The project aims to maximize sustainability through innovative high performance building envelopes, solar energy, native habitats and more. The roof garden design includes the Columnar Swedish Aspen (Populus tremula ‘erecta’), a prairie-adapted variation of the building’s namesake Populus tremuloides (native Quaking Aspen). The rooftop bar and restaurant offers stunning views of the Denver skyline and Rocky Mountain Front Range. The adjacent green roof plantings were selected to support pollinator species and allow urban visitors to experience the delights of the prairie ecosystem in the open air.
“Recently, green roof design in Denver has been moving toward more regionally appropriate applications through strategic use of native and adapted species and deeper substrate profiles.” says Dr. Jennifer Bousselot, Assistant Professor of Horticulture at Colorado State University, who consulted on the project’s planting design and also spearheaded the symposium. The City of Denver gave an update on its green roof ordinance passed in 2017 that required new and existing buildings over 25,000 square feet in size to install a green roof. The ordinance has faced challenges in a city with unique climate fluctuations, however, the push for sustainable architecture in Denver seems to be catching on.
The hotel will join other rooftop habitats in Colorado’s capital, including at: the Denver Botanic Gardens, the Clyfford Still Museum, and the University of Colorado Anschutz Wellness Center (source: Colorado Green Roofs). Dr. Bousselot further notes that, “An excellent example of a high impact, regionally appropriate green roof will bloom on the upcoming Populus rooftop, designed by Superbloom.”
#PopulusHotel partners include Urban Villages, Studio Gang, American Hydrotech, Inc. Kimley Horn, Studio NYL, Design Agency, WSP, Arup, LS Group, Lerch Bates, Advanced Consulting Engineers
Find images for this project here.
