Daniel Roehr

University of British Columbia | UBC · School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

This research examines how distinct climatic conditions affect the runoff reduction functions of green roofs by comparing performance in Vancouver, BC, Kelowna, BC and Shanghai, P.R. China. To quantify the reduction in runoff volume effectuated by green roofs, both the Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN), crop coefficient method and the...

With the infrastructure to manage storm water threats in cities becoming increasingly expensive to build or repair, the design community needs to look at alternative approaches. Living roofs present an opportunity to compliment ground-level storm water control measures, contributing to a holistic, integrated urban water management system. This book...

There are many existing Low Impact Development (LID) applications available to calculate stormwater runoff volume, but they often fail to address LID systems in the initial design stages. To address this problem a LID application was developed for international use that supports designers considering how to reduce stormwater runoff through LID stra...

The interaction of our bodies in space is intrinsically linked to the ways in which we design. In spatial design we tend to focus on solely the visual, often treating it as the dominant sense while ignoring the other four senses: touch, sound, smell, taste. While research has been carried out on the perception of multisensorial experiences and desi...

With climate change increasingly driving extreme weather events and heightened natural hazard risks, landscape architects must enhance their ability to identify site vulnerabilities effectively. Currently, a notable gap exists in resources available to sensitize landscape architects and related design professionals to site- specific hazards, impedi...

The devastating effects of climate change we are witnessing, such as the floods throughout Germany in 2022, are placing more pressure on designers to predict and mitigate such events while designing various sites. Greenskinslab's researchers at the University of British Columbia, Canada have spent many years developing digital tools to predict, mit...

The UBC studio organized by Daniel Roehr and Stephanie Braconnier was one of at least four that had chosen their sites and written their brief before agreeing to join the Studio Problématique experiment. After reading their course description and speaking with the pair, I understood why they had agreed to participate; they framed their studio in re...

The 2030 Agenda shows the path to achieve the sustainable development goals. In addition, the International Paris Agreement, the IPCC reports on climate change and the recent COP26 in Glasgow urge the international community to decarbonize their economies and move towards carbon neutral countries by 2050. As urban designers, willing to meet these i...

This paper focuses on the implementation of green urban infrastructure solutions (GUIS) in an urban pilot project in Legazpi, Gipuzkoa (Spain). It shows the environmental benefits derived from an overall GUIS project, in terms of climate change adaptation, such as ameliorating stormwater runoff, reducing urban hot spots and improving urban air and...

Green Urban Infrastructure Solutions (GUIS) are becoming more and more popular globally. Recent research reveals the environmental benefits derived from GUIS as well as their contribution to climate change adaptation. However, the urgent need for GUIS in order to meet the Paris Agreement, has not translated into an easy implementation thereof. This...

Increased reliance on visually-dominant digital tools to represent ideas and evaluate sites has put landscape architecture at risk of losing the benefits of incorporating all senses in the design of spaces. This paper investigates an on-site method for teaching multi-sensorial perception in landscape architecture pedagogy, ensuring that the visual...

This chapter presents case studies of four conservation sites and seven green roofs located in western British Columbia in the ecoregions of the Fraser Lowlands and Vancouver Island. The region is geographically complex with remnants of forested, savanna, and grassland ecoregions that once populated the Fraser River delta and parts of Vancouver Isl...

Este artículo pretende analizar las soluciones urbanas de infraestructura verde desde el punto de vista de la arquitectura y el urbanismo. Se trata de un concepto muy amplio y transversal que engloba disciplinas y profesiones muy diferentes; las cuales deben alimentarse unas a otras para conseguir la mejor solución ur- bana posible. Por ello, desde...

Historical parks and gardens are a physical record of history, culture, ecology, romance, art, design, past wealth of humankind and a climate recording. They are Kulturlandschaft and ‘cultured’ landscapes, artifacts of humanity’s past and progress, preserved and kept alive through careful and constant maintenance. They are sites of learning and rec...

Historische Parks und Gärten sind physische Zeugnisse der Geschichte, Ökologie, Romantik, Kunst, des Designs und des vergangenen Reichtums der Menschheit. Zudem dokumentieren sie das Klima vergangener Zeiten. Sie sind Kulturlandschaft und ‚kultivierte‘ Landschaft, Artefakte der menschlichen Vergangenheit und des menschlichen Fortschritts, durch sor...

The global pandemic caused by COVID-19 is putting pressure on cities throughout the world to rethink how they should develop and operate. This paper examines how gardens have been and how they should continue to be a significant element within the urban fabric of cities. It discusses the role of gardens today and examines the public health impact o...

Brief description to visualize stormwater management for a client and for teaching purposes through animation with a tablet.

The current method of making larger planning decisions prior to bringing in architects and landscape architects needs to transform. We need more cooperative and communicative processes where all stakeholders sit together from the start to develop land-use and its housing solutions all at once. The advantages of such an approach are many and extend...

Vancouver is one of the youngest “Western” Cities in the world, with a ten thousand-year old first nation history, before the Spanish in 1791 and British in 1792 “discovered” this green, lush marvel and pristine part of world. Today, Canada’s third largest city is consistently ranked as one of the most livable cities in the world due to its breatht...

To respond to increasing weather extremes and a quickly growing population on Vancouver’s North Shore, the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture created an interdisciplinary design-studio in September 2016 on the integration of stormwater management (Low Impact Development-LID) into the urban fabric. The studio proposed that design...

With the infrastructure to manage stormwater threats in cities becoming increasingly expensive to build or repair, the design community needs to look at alternative approaches. Living roofs present an opportunity to complement ground- level stormwater control measures, contributing to a holistic, integrated urban water management system. This book...

Currently students in higher education are taught LID but lack the ability to apply the knowledge in a technical and informed manner, this is often left to hydrological engineers, rather than those who design LID in architectural, landscape architectural and planning positions. Planners especially need to be trained as they are often found responsi...

The way of traditional planning and methods for urban flood management are behind us, but we have yet to reach a new consensus on how to model and implement flood management effectively into urban growth and renewal practices. While architecture makes radical new leaps in the name of a sustainable, healthier, future we neglect the positive impact l...

Living roofs are an important Low Impact Design (LID) tool to manage stormwater. Due to climate change and intense urban development LID stormwater strategies are now crucial for urban design around the world, especially in economically booming China with a long history of floods. The changing climate made rain events and their peak flow runoff rat...

Green spaces play an important role in urban life. In dense cities, large new urban park projects are gradually reducing, and small green spaces such as pocket parks are likely to become more important. However, previous studies on small urban green spaces were usually carried out in the developed countries. Relatively, there’s still little researc...

GREEN ROOFS MAY be considered a modern trend by some people, but they’re actually old hat in Vancouver where some impressive, large-scale green roof projects have been implemented since the early 1970s. Between 1974 and 1983, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander and Arthur Erickson Architects showed the world the design possibilities of green roofs with the Pr...

French fries are not a vegetable, and broccoli is not grown already plastic-wrapped in a supermarket cooler. Yet, in many households across Canada and North America, there is a greater intimacy with McDonalds than with the planting of squash or the taste of a truly ripe tomato. Our food culture promotes whatever gets us out the door and ready for w...

Green roofs are being increasingly implemented in a variety of climates around the world. They are being promoted to help manage stormwater, mitigate urban heat island effects, restore biodiversity in cities, conserve energy, and to grow local food. It is not always desirable or possible, however, to achieve all of these objectives in every project...

The remediation, reclamation and adaptive re-use of landfills are of growing concern for landscape architecture as an academic field as well as a design profession. This presentation will examine potentials and constraints concerning design approaches that (re-)integrate such sites into the landscape. A focus will be on the differences between appr...

This paper demonstrates how existing historic ‘parkways’, a legacy of American Landscape Architecture, can be overlaid with sustainable interactive programs, particularly with regard to urban agriculture, to increase their environmental, social and cultural values. Many of these linear landscapes conceived following formal principles are underutili...

This research uses the EPA Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) to simulate runoff generated by impervious roofs and green roofs. Simulation results are compared with previous simulation results using Natural Resources Conservation Service Technical Release-55 (tr-55) and measurement by the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). Findings s...

Deserted parks, maintenance intensive lawns, vacant boulevards, over-sized road medians and dog-walkers turf shape the image of contemporary green spaces in North American cities. The large number of under-utilized green spaces is the starting point for re-thinking urban public green space, as an active, social urban infrastructure. Urban greenways...

Green-factor systems, rating the "ecological value" of a site and the green factors for landscape elements according to their positive effects on the ecosystem, are adaptable and applicable to many cities. The "positive effects" of landscape elements, however, vary with climatic and geographic conditions. One method of evaluating elements such as g...

The research in this article focuses on the Laneway Housing program in EcoDensity. It looks at an average single family lot in Vancouver and quantifies the impact of an additional laneway house on stormwater runoff, and its resulting impact on different strategies for stormwater management, including the use of green roofs, water storage systems an...

In downtown Vancouver, streets and driveways account for about 20% of total land area, while pervious green space varies from 28% in the West End District to less than 5% in the Downtown District. The potential for rain gardens to occupy the existing green space in the West End means the design of rain gardens in the West End would be different fro...

This article focuses on the role landscape architects and planners can take in the creation of urban food production landscapes. It draws upon a series of local projects and visions to demonstrate how this can be accomplished. Within the context of Metro Vancouver, there are signifi cant constraints to expansion due to geographical limitations, a s...

This research focuses on the environmental benefits derived from an overall “living skins” intervention [green roofs, green streets, and green façades] in cities. Through the analysis of a case study area in Vancouver, it initiates a methodology to quantify the contributions of such a green intervention to ameliorating the environmental impacts of...

The research focuses on the environmental benefits derived from an overall intervention of green envelope types [roofs, façades and streets] in the city core of Vancouver, Canada. To achieve this, it analyzes previous precedents conducted in cities such as Berlin, Germany; Malmö, Sweden; Toronto, Vancouver, Canada; Chicago and Seattle, USA; and app...

This research argues the current practice of green façades in terms of the accomplishment of a broader range of opportunities they might realize. It analyses existing green façades according to different types, construction systems, and relationships with the immediate context. This reveals there are two major categories of green façades: opaque gr...

This research explores the potential benefits derived from a proposed green intervention which combines living envelopes (green roofs and green façades) and green energy envelopes (photovoltaic and thermal panels), as a means of addressing the concept of carbon neutral cities. It proposes to take advantage of the environmental contributions that li...

This research reports the potential environmental benefits derived from an overall intervention of living skins [green roofs and green façades] in the city core of Vancouver, Canada. These include the reduction in cooling and heating demand; reduction in stormwater runoff; improvement of air quality; enrichment of urban biodiversity and urban agric...

This research focuses on the potential contribution of green surfaces [green roofs and green façades] in reducing CO 2 emissions as applied to the city core of Vancouver, Canada. This includes an analysis of their influence in reducing the energy demand by buildings and in food production, as well as in the capacity of greenery to trap air pollutan...

This research focuses on the contribution of green roofs towards reducing stormwater runoff in the cities of Kelowna and Vancouver. As these areas have disparate climatic conditions, they are ideal for analysing and comparing the effects of green roofs on stormwater runoff. The Curve Number Method (Technical Release-55) and Crop Coefficient Method...

The paper focuses on the environmental benefits derived from an overall intervention of green surfaces [roofs, façades and streets] in the city core of Vancouver, Canada. It applies the Seattle Green Factor to the case study area, greening the existing 30% of flat roof areas, 30% of sidewalk areas, and 15% of façade areas in order to achieve the va...

This research explores the influence of an “urban regreeneration” intervention into existing urban environments. In a rapidly growing world urban population (United Nations 2008), cities appear as critical exploration elements. Considering also the natural resources constraints the world is currently facing, this research asserts that the regener...

A new design phenomenon has appeared in Chinese landscape architecture in conjunction with China's economic growth and globalisation in the last 10-15 years. When designing projects, Chinese landscape architects and students look mainly to Western publications, projects and case studies for inspiration, sometimes even copying designs outright. When...

Vancouver has become such a global model for urbanism that Vancouverism refers to the twin ideals of increased residential density and liveability in the city core.The article critically reflects on this approach which, despite its many failings, nevertheless creates new possibilities for landscape.