At the 2018 annual CitiesAlive Conference held in New York City, a consortium of Ohio universities was selected as one of the first four North American regional centers of living architecture by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities and the Green Infrastructure Foundation.
Faculty from Kent State University will join colleagues from the University of Cincinnati and Heidelberg University to lead the Greater Ohio Living Architecture Center (GOLA), which will be dedicated to the study of integrating vegetation within and upon buildings as novel ecosystems.
The center will engage vegetated roof and wall industries in research and training activities for the Great Lakes and Ohio region through meetings, academic symposia and professional training across the three university campuses over the next three years.
The GOLA Center will be led by the new executive director, Reid Coffman, PhD, associate professor of Kent State’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design (CAED), and faculty from both CAED and the College of Arts and Sciences will participate.
“The center will build upon much of the work in living architecture already underway and set the stage for new developments in research and innovation, while helping students prepare to enter this growing discipline,” Coffman says.