Epsten Group

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Epsten Group
Illustration by Julie Jones

New ecofriendly buildings are great, but as Ross Wallace, a designer at the Old Fourth Ward’s sustainable design firm Epsten Group, points out, “What’s more sustainable than using an existing building?” Its renovated 1940s office building shows just how efficient old construction can become. Nowhere is this more obvious than Epsten’s green roof, which includes thin-film solar panels and a stretch of six-inch-deep pallets filled with drought-tolerant succulents. All that sedum does some heavy lifting: helping collect rainwater and reduce runoff while also creating additional insulation, further curbing the building’s energy use.

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This article originally appeared in our September 2015 issue.

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