Scarborough Civic Centre Branch Has a Cool Green Roof
The Scarborough Civic Centre Branch will be opening on Wednesday, May 20th at 10 a.m. It's our 100th location and has a lot of special features including the sweeping architecture, a Digital Innovation Hub, KidsStop Interactive Early Literacy Centre, an outdoor reading garden and following a recent trend within Toronto Public Library it will also have a green roof.
You can read more about the new branch from an interview with the branch head librarian Trina Preece. You can also read about the rich history of libraries in this part of Scarborough in Barbara Myrvold's local history blog post.
The sloped green roofs and adjacent landscaping has been designed to allow users on the ground floor of the library and on the raised connection to the Scarborough Civic Centre to fully see and enjoy the native plantings.
The 1,550m2 roof mimics a bio-diverse alvar ecology (native to Southern Ontario) that is self watering and will provide habitat for birds, insects and a variety of indigenous plants (and very likely a raccoon). It will incorporate existing mature trees on the east side.
Our buildings are often designed with large windows to let natural light come into a branch and for the outside world to see into the library. In this case, the same design elements will allow library users to see outside to the green spaces.
Scott Torrance Landscape Architect Inc has been responsible for the green roof working with the building project team lead Levitt Goodman Architects (LGA) and with Phillip H. Carter Architect. LGA has provided a very nifty time lapse video on Vimeo of the construction of the building that you might enjoy.
The final roof will have varying soil depths from 50 to 150mm and will provide 50% vegetated cover. If you're interested in green roofs you may enjoy an earlier blog post on all the other green roofs at Toronto Public Library branches.
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