Roofs: The New Facades

Thanks in part to techno tools like Google Earth that have made birds-eye views accessible to the earth-bound, architects and urban planners are focusing increased attention on buildings' roofs. Spaces which used to be dedicated to (ugly) utilities or otherwise neglected are now targets of innovative design. The Los Angeles Times surveys the view from atop the observation tower of San Francisco's year-old de Young Museum, and finds the roof of the museum's main wing "covered in long, thin skylights and the same copper panels that wrap the rest of the museum," and the site of the "new $429-million home for the California Academy of Sciences, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano," which, upon its completion in 2008, will be "topped by an undulating, 2.5-acre green roof, planted with wildflowers and other native species — a remarkable piece of landscape architecture lifted 35 feet into the air."

  

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