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28 Mar 2020

Aurora St. Luke’s Rooftop Healing Garden and Conservatory

Case Study 3

The concept of this project was unique. The purpose was to provide a healing garden view to the patients who were bed-bound and cannot even leave the room. These patients have the ultimate desire to experience outdoors after spending a lot of time in the hospital wards.

They planned to include a pathway in the healing garden on which the beds can wheel through the garden. Therefore, the hospital required a rooftop garden and a vegetative roof to achieve their goal. The management wanted patients and their loved ones to experience a calm oasis where they can have a good time without realizing that they are in a hospital. The garden was also supposed to provide spiritual healing to the patients.

Project Details

The Flat Roof Pros played a significant role in developing the garden on the roof. The vegetative roof was planned to be built on the eighth floor of the building with a wide variety of sedum plants surrounded by pavers.

It was projected to demand the high quality of the roof, which can withhold the weight of massive plants and fertile soil, which was essential for the remarkable growth of these plants. The major challenge was to make the roof waterproof because it was going to face a lot of water drainage on a daily basis.

Typical roofs are not prone to water because the rainfall occurs once in a while. However, in the case of this special roof, the plants were supposed to be watered on an almost daily basis. It was decided to place at least 1,900 plants in the garden and the vegetative roof.

The other challenge was to provide enough sunlight to the indoor conservatory, which was built in the center of the garden. So, we decided to make a tower that can bring maximum sunlight into the structure. We placed two layers of insulation for maximum protection along with a drainage layer, root barrier, and a rubberized asphalt waterproofing.

The hospital was also running during the construction of the project, so we also had this restriction not to disturb the daily routine of the hospital and complete the project in time. Therefore we, along with the hospital management, decided to tweak our working hours for the minimum interference in the daily hospital activities and bring our material during the night time.

We provided the best results with our highly skilled and dedicated team, and the management was pleased with the outcomes. The roof is strong enough to hold such weight. The plants are getting the maximum sunlight for the best growth and health. The people who visited the hospital also liked the concept, and the build quality and management were happy to see people enjoying the rooftop garden.

We also had some budget restrictions, which made this project even challenging. The overall budget of the project was $4.9 million, in which the Vince Lombardi Charitable Funds contributed $1.5 million, and the Agnes and Moreland Hamilton estate contributed $1.7 million.

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