Our monthly blog series, Celebrating the Arts, highlights talented artists and art organizations whose work reflects the diverse and rich communities, ideas, and lives that make up our community. Broadway Stages is committed to promoting these individuals, their talents and work so that a wider audience can enjoy, learn, and benefit from their creativity and passion.

This month, we feature someone very dear to us, Marni Majorelle, a native New Yorker with a background in biology conservation, horticulture and landscape design, and a passion for making New York a greener, more sustainable, and healthier place to live.

Marni is the president and founder of Alive Structures, a certified Women Owned Business (WBE) in New York City that has been designing and installing green roofs, living walls, and ecological gardens since 2007. A Certified Green Roof Installer, Marni studied Biology Conservation at Columbia University and Horticulture and Landscape Design at Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

She believes in integrating nature into our city; making it a healthier and more resilient place to live for humans and other species. Along with her life partner and co-principal Eric Majorelle who manages large installations and runs the back office, and a team of professionals and educators specializing in green roofs, Marni is building large scale green roofs using wildflowers and native grasses, and creating green corridors in our city’s industrial zones. These corridors provide a multitude of benefits by improving and beautifying the urban environment, creating job opportunities, reducing storm water overflow, air pollution, and energy consumption, increasing biodiversity, and creating open green space for people to enjoy.

Broadway Stages has had the privilege of working with Marni firsthand. Her artistic vision and skill have helped to advance our commitment to environmental sustainability that includes 50,000 square feet of rooftop solar panels and over 55,000 square feet of green rooftop gardens that provide mutual value to our operations, community, and natural habitat.

Marni and her team at Alive Structures have transformed more than 50,000 square feet of our rooftops into urban oases including 23,000+ square feet at Kingsland Wildflowers at Broadway Stages, and 30,000 square feet comprising Broadway Stages Green Corridor, all atop our film production studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. These green rooftops welcome visitors to enjoy natural beauty, including winding paths surrounded by pollinator-friendly wildflowers and grasses frequented by a variety of insects and birds. These spaces also host educational programming led by Newtown Creek Alliance, and arts events organized by Broadway Stages’ resident arts organization, NOoSPHERE Arts. Read about the recent Kingsland Wildflowers Festival here.

We applaud Marni and her team for their work to make New York a cleaner, greener, more livable city. And we thank her for her perseverance and commitment to continue greening our community, one rooftop, terrace, and garden at a time.

For information about turning your rooftop or other space into a green oasis, visit the Alive Structures website.