Truly Living Roofs

We need truly living roofs — roofs that are not just used for cultivating crops, gardening, but for cultivating the weather proof membrane of the roof itself.

The roof should be regenerative in this way.

This synergy we've yet to see attained, but we need it.

This requires materials research and development.

Consider a roof designed for hemp cultivation and bee colonies.

Now imagine a waterproof sheathing, a building material, made from the beeswax and hemp hurd.

Concept for a harmonode roof design:

• Sheathing:
  The roof structure is multilayered. The hemp grows in the beds above a utility/crawl space. Below the crawl space the insulated "building envelope" layer is watersealed using sheathing/waterproofing produced by the roof itself.
• Structure:
  Coppiced trusses.
• Exoskeleton:
  The building envelope should not be a simple exterior layer (technically multilayered as exterior sheathing, insulation, and interior finishing, a compound layer), but a whole system that includes various functions including seasonal adaptation and the crawl space mentioned in sheathing.

Maintainability

Part of the exoskeleton concept is that it's designed to be maintainable.