This one caught my attention today by combining the love of urban agriculture and rooftop gardening in one visually stimulating package. Spotted via Dezeen: “Brooklyn architects Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO-IL) have designed a rooftop landscape of allotments to showcase green roof technologies on an industrial building in Queens, New York City.”

:: images via Dezeen

The work was commissioned by green roof manufacturer, Garden City Roofs. A little more detail from Dezeen: “Roofs are underused in New York City. Garden City Roofs, a startup company headed by Beth Lieberman, caters to a growing need for technical expertise and access to green roof systems. Garden City Roofs is converting the unused roof of a large industrial building into a showroom and knowledge-center for green roof systems. SO-IL has been asked to evaluate access, layout the roof systems and hard-scapes and design a sales- and learning center on the roof.”

:: images via Dezeen

A favorite image of mine, evoking some of the swoopy artistry of a Thomas Church sketch from the 1950’s replete with egg-like sun…

:: image via Dezeen

It’s interesting to see the ‘object’ that appears on the roof… The reason? Not sure. The purpose. Um, use the word Truncated Octohedron? Turns out it’s a “…structure will be a showcase of materials that are either completely biodegradable or recyclable.”

:: images via Dezeen

More like architects that couldn’t resist the urge to plop some structure on top of a structure in order to give it resonance as a ‘project’. You’ll see the hexagonal patterns applied on the farming production surface as well, which work well for nested spaces with interior pathways – a good garden layout. Probably the least successful part of all of this is the bad acronymic name, which I first thought was just random, then realized spelled an elongated SO-IL… uh, ok… well cool project anyway. 🙂