Green roof on the Tabaret Building Our office has been working at improving sustainability on campus since 2006 and I am happy to say that we have had a lot of success. But one of the areas that we are still hoping to improve after all these years in our green space.  What is considered by many sustainability-minded institutions to be the crown jewel of their campus (lush green spaces) is a bit of a sticking point here at uOttawa. You see, a lot of older institutions were created through land grants or large land donations. This gave institutions the ability to finance the expansion of their programs by leasing and selling land. Not unliked these institutions, the University of Ottawa was founded based on a land donation by the Besserer family. But unlike some other land grants, it was a small parcel of land which means that since then the institutions has had to slowly try to buy up surrounding land. Sometimes this works... sometimes it doesn't. After years of purchasing land and ...

  Let's take a moment to talk about the old proverbial green hat, more commonly know as a green roof. For years green roofs have been thought of as a nice to have but not really cost effective for most buildings. That perception started to change more recently; manifesting in new policies like the Toronto Green Roof Bylaw . Our campus got in on the action a little while back when we changed our building standards to prioritize green roofs as well. This autumn, the first green roof under this design paradigm is set to be installed on the Perez Building. Since the building is a bit older, our engineering assessment found that a green roof isn't appropriate everywhere, but along the north roof the conditions are just right. This works out fairly well since this part of the building is lower than the other roof sections; meaning that occupants will be able to see the roof from their windows. Stunning views of green roofs from an office or classroom window might be considered the c...