The Bees Knees

Last year I visited the Monti Building in Brooklyn, as part of GreenHomeNYC's Green Building Open House tours.  This is a great example of a building that gives as good as it gets.  For one thing, it is home to a variety of small local businesses and artists, so it is supportive of local economy and culture.  

For another, it utilizes a variety of energy efficient technologies (you can read more about those here), including several which can be found on the roof--  a 9 Kw solar array that provides for most of the buildings day-time electricity needs. . .a 4000 sf, low maintenance green roof. . .

. . .and walkways that make use of permeable pavers, both of which help with storm water management.

But I think the most delightful of the building's features are the roof top beehives!  Urban bee keepers are important members of the local/urban food economy.

Another delightful feature of this building is that it is a Birds of Brooklyn site! This is "...an audio art project [that] aims to reconnect city dwellers with the natural sounds of the area and raise awareness about declining bird populations in urban environments."

That just sounds like fun to me!

Green on the Go

This weekend I volunteered at the New New York DIY Block Party.

One of the vendors there was the Biobus. That would be interesting enough, but what really caught my eye was a little patch of green on the roof at the back of the Biobus.

It's called Bus Roots and was conceived of by Marco Antonio Castro Cosio. His idea is to create a fleet of mobile green roofs on the tops of city buses!  Read more about it at here).

Sounds like fun to me!