Kate Ancaya
landscape architect, asheville, North carolina
Kate is a landscape architect and founding partner at Living Roofs, Inc. (LRI), an award-winning design and construction company specializing in vegetated roofs and landscape on structure projects. Founded in 2006, LRI has dedicated years to mastering the complexity of landscape on structure throughout the southeast–from design to construction to ongoing care and maintenance. Kate strives to find new approaches to address significant climate challenges such as urban heat island effect and rising temperatures, loss of biodiversity, and water quality impacts through green infrastructure.
lecture:
Future Roof - How Plants Transform Rooftops into Resilient Infrastructure
Infrastructure may sound off-base at a perennial conference, but plants play a vital role in our topic. Discover how vegetated roofs transform underutilized spaces in the urban environment–turning barren, overlooked spaces into resilient living stormwater infrastructure that provides a cascade of community-wide social and environmental benefits. We will explore strategies for designing and maintaining beautiful, high-performance vegetated roofs that deliver critical ecosystem services while creating gorgeous and thriving plant communities for people and pollinators. Stormwater infrastructure can and should be green, rich with biodiversity, and multi-purpose - come learn how and why we think meadows in the sky are the future.