Roofscape Design: Regenerating the City upon the City

As focus shifts to "no net land take" city regeneration
approaches one of the main traditional elements of architecture-
the roof-is gaining renewed prominence. This book
provides a survey of worldwide experiences of city rooftop
re-use strategies such as building-on and integrating new
volumes within the existing buildings. Twenty-five case studies
illustrate a multiplicity of projects that innovate on traditional
typologies by offering multiple ways of living, working
and using public services in the city. They all share a symbiotic
method that exploits the extraordinariness of the "top
condition" offered by the roof to foster a subtle change in the
whole building's urban identity. They test new technologies
for light and quick construction methods in order to deal with
structural constraints and the needs of inhabitants.
City roofscape redesign belongs to an adaptive attitude based
on knowledge of the dynamic process of transformation of
the physical realm, far removed from regressive preservationonly
behavior. It represents a remarkable way of coping with
urban regeneration issues.