The Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory (also known as the GRIT Lab) on top of the Daniels Faculty building at 230 College Street is featured in The Grid this week. You can check out the article and accompanying photos online — or view the beautifully designed double-page spread in one of the free copies of The Grid available in newspaper boxes and subway stations across Toronto. 

Writes The Grid's David Topping:

"Toronto likes green roofs. It pretty much has to: Since January 30, 2010, almost every new building with a footprint over 2,000 square metres has been required to have one, and the bigger the building, the greater the expanse of its roof must be green. (Until April 2012, industrial buildings were exempt from this rule, but no longer.) And then there’s U of T’s new Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory, or GRIT Lab. Hidden five storeys above College and Huron, on top of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, it’s not just one green roof—it’s more like 33 of them."

Established in 2010 at the Daniels Faculty by the Centre for Landscape Research, the GRIT Lab includes 33 green roof test beds, a weather station, and 264 sensors connected to over 5,000 linear feet of wiring. Data on soil moisture, runoff, temperature, rainfall, humidity, solar, and wind is collected every two seconds. The lab sits atop of the Daniels Faculty building at 230 College, and is the only one of its kind testing green roofs in an urban environment in Canada.