Press Release, 06. October 2025

New green roof on Gewandhaus zu Leipzig concert hall becomes a research laboratory

A green roof improves the urban microclimate and helps save energy

The Gewandhaus zu Leipzig has established a new green roof. It was handed over for use in a ceremony on 2 October 2025. Not only should this improve the microclimate in the city centre, but it shall also optimise the thermal insulation of the Gewandhaus roof and become a new urban habitat for plants and animals. This project was made possible through the support of the Leipzig Office for Environmental Protection and scientific institutions united in the Leipzig Green Roof Think Tank on the initiative of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). In the future, they will be using the green roof as a research laboratory to study the microclimatic effects of green roofs and to optimise their use in cities.

High population-density city centres with their heat-retaining buildings are particularly affected by climate change and extreme weather events: Concrete, stone and asphalt heat up when the temperature is high and only gradually release this heat again. Heat islands harbour health risks for the population. Rainwater does not seep into the ground during heavy rainfall. This causes flooding and overloads the sewer system. The city centre in Leipzig is also affected: In Leipzig's urban climate analysis, for example, the area of the Gewandhaus and adjacent built-up areas were identified as climatic problem areas with unfavourable to highly unfavourable pollution conditions. However, climate change also has a direct impact on the Gewandhaus: Without corrective measures, temperatures in the concert hall and auditoriums would increase continuously during the summer months from year to year. This also increases the technical expenditure to cool the interior spaces and air conditioning costs rise.

With the support of the Office for Environmental Protection and scientific institutions such as the UFZ, the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences (HTWK Leipzig) and Leipzig University collaborating in the "Leipzig Green Roof Think Tank", the Gewandhaus has now converted 800 square metres of its roof area from a gravel roof to a green roof. A total of nearly 2,000 plants were set out and 20 kilograms of plant seeds were sown. "Green roofs are an important aspect of sustainable cities that can help improve their liveability even under the conditions of climate change," explains UFZ environmental biotechnologist and co-initiator of the think tank Dr. Lucie Moeller. The UFZ has been conducting research in the functions of green roofs, their resilience with respect to fluctuations in temperature and humidity and pollutant breakdown by vegetation for some time now.

The new green roof will provide an additional layer of insulation for the Gewandhaus. This should reduce temperature fluctuations, save energy, reduce internal sound reflections and also become a home for animal and plant species that have difficulty finding habitats and food in Leipzig's densely populated city centre. The green roof will also be used in the future by researchers gathering further knowledge about the establishment, maintenance and effect of planted roofs in urban areas.

Instrumentation installed for research

Researchers from institutes such as the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences (HTWK Leipzig) installed special fibre optic sensors under the substrate in order to gain insights into the management of green roofs and to verify the effectiveness of maintenance measures. "This enables continuous recording of temperatures at specific locations in the green roof over long periods of time. It also supports conclusions regarding the moisture and condition of the green roof which would otherwise only be possible through time-consuming inspections by experts," says Martin Weisbrich, head of the HTWK research group. In the future, the information from these instruments will be available at any time, enabling the plants to be watered at exactly the right time where the substrate is too dry. The substrate measurements are supplemented by images taken with a thermal imaging camera on a drone. This enables the derivation of important, generalizable relationships between temperatures inside the substrate and on its surface.

Thus far, this fibre-optic method implemented on the green roof of the Gewandhaus has been applied at the HTWK Leipzig and at the UFZ in two other fields: One of these involves monitoring buildings and detecting cracks or structural problems, while the other is in measuring the temperature effects of electromagnetic fields such as dielectric or radio wave heating processes . Funding from the transfun® innovation programme of the UFZ then enabled a joint UFZ/HTWK working group to test whether this instrumentation is also suitable for use in blue-green infrastructures. These are becoming increasingly important as cities endeavour to adapt to climate change. Successful completion of representative measurements, such as on a green building facade in Leipzig and on an experimental green roof segment of the UFZ then signalled to the UFZ/HTWK team headed by Dr. Ulf Roland that this knowledge from structural and environmental engineering can also be successfully applied to blue/green infrastructures.

And UFZ environmental biotechnologist Dr. Lucie Moeller, who is coordinating the UFZ's green roof research, also uses the Gewandhaus green roof as an external research laboratory, especially for studying microclimatic effects. In addition to the UFZ and HTWK Leipzig, Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) and the Leipzig Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) are also involved in the ValiGrün project, which is validating the climate adaptation potential for optimizing the functions of blue-green infrastructures in urban areas with funding from the European Regional Development Fund (EFRE) and Sächsische Aufbaubank (SAB).

Further information:
New brochure on managing green roofs (German only): https://www.lw.uni-leipzig.de/fileadmin/Fakult%C3%A4t_LeWi/Botanischer_Garten/dateien_web_final/11_Transfer/01_gruendach/Leipziger_Gruendaecher_pflegen_erhalten_optimieren_2025_web.pdf

Further information

Dr Lucie Moeller
UFZ Department of Systemic Environmental Biotechnology
lucie.moeller@ufz.de

Dr Ulf Roland
UFZ/HTWK working group "Applied Environmental Physics and Radio Wave Technology"
ulf.roland@ufz.de

UFZ press office

Susanne Hufe
Phone: +49 341 6025-1630
presse@ufz.de