In today’s dense, vertical cities, terraces—often overlooked as mere technical rooftops—are emerging as key spaces for reconnecting with nature, expanding residential functions, and offering moments of collective relief. Particularly in single-family homes located in compact urban areas, these elevated surfaces represent valuable opportunities to increase usable living space without occupying more land. By lifting daily life above street level, terraces open new ways of inhabiting the city, enabling a range of uses from leisure and contemplation to food production and social gathering. In contexts marked by limited green space and strained infrastructure, they hold the potential to generate what landscape architect Catherine Mosbach calls "additional layers of urbanity." Whether imagined as hanging gardens, gathering spots, edible landscapes, or wellness zones, terraces challenge the idea that the city ends at the top floor—inviting us to see the roof as a new kind of ground.
As early as the 1920s, Le Corbusier recognized both the symbolic and functional power of rooftops through his concept of the “fifth façade”—a dynamic, accessible upper surface capable of hosting gardens, leisure spaces, and new forms of urban life. This forward-thinking vision resonates strongly today in the face of environmental and social challenges. Landmark projects such as MVRDV’s monumental temporary staircase in Rotterdam, giving public access to a rooftop, or large-scale initiatives like Toronto’s Green Roof program, Paris’s green roof mandate, and New York’s rooftop community gardens show how these spaces are being reimagined as infrastructure—by both public authorities and private actors alike.
