From a realists standpoint it seems highly impractical considering how much high-rises cost with how cheap agriculture products are (except narcotics, a weed/coke/opium tower would be quite profitable). This sounds like an archology minus people.
I would love it if Dubai threw some money at this. They've got money to burn- I agree with Apurimac that there's a long way to go before these are economically feasible so it'd be nice for oil money to fund some R+D.
The renders are pretty charming and there's a certain simplicity to it that suggests that it'd work
The whole solar rights thing needs to be carefully considered before throwing these things up everywhere- you wouldn't want your crop tower shaded.
On a sort of tangent- I was introduced to a charming little technology called Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) that are solar cells injected with a dye to absorb all but a specific wavelength range which is transmitted/reflected. The result is a solar cell that comes in varying colors:
Well if you put together some of the research done at Clemson University on the photomorphogenesis of plants due to the influence of alterations in the ratio of red-far red light experienced- you could theorize that by combining DSSC using the appropriate color dyes you could affect crop growth.
To be more specific- red mulch (tarps) were laid around strawberry plants in a Clemson study. The reflected red light increased the yield and size of the berries. Blue mulch affected the flavor of basil (if I remember right). Tomatoes respond similarly to strawberries and can be manipulated to improve yield.
The benefit offered by fusing DSSC with urban agriculture is the idea that you could be producing energy from the same sunrays that you're using to grow plants resulting in a greater net efficiency. Further- the introduction of color into the appearance of solar cells opens up a whole new world of aesthetic potential.
Actually upon further research at verticalfarm.com it appears that alot of bases have been covered as far as costs are concerned. The math they did shows that a verticle farm would generate profits at approx 12 million per year, which would mean the building could pay for itself (an estimated 83 mil, which sounds low for high-rise steel construction but what do i know) in 7 years and after that you'd be making around 12 million in profit annually. That sounds like a sweet deal to me, put 10 of those towers up and you could be making 120 million and you wouldn't have to worry about crops going bad or anything like that. Of course in NYC you'd probably have to spend a big chunk of change just on land, and I'm pretty sure apartment towers would probably be more profitable but i could actually see this working in a city with lower property values.
jBond--that sounds like pretty amazing research...even just finding out about the solar cells themselves could be pretty influential in convincing more architects about their feasibility as a cladding material--one common complaint about pv cells is "but they're so ugly..."
can you have cells dyed completely one color, or are thy only available in tie-dyed colors--which would be very cool also. stained glass for the 21st century.
apurimac--haven't had the opportunity to check out the numbers myself, but it'd be interesting to see how much crop failure they've worked into those numbers. would it be something akin to traditional hydroponically grown fruits/veggies?
the image I showed is just an example cell of the various color dyes that have been developed- the actual cells could be more monochrome to make recharging them (swapping out the dye which has to happen every 10 or so years? maybe longer, I forget....) easier.
Right now the efficiencies of DSSC are in the neighborhood of 6 percent which is a long way from the 18% of the latest PV's... but in the year 2000...
seems like a colossal waste of money and time. in midwestern cities like detroit and cleveland where there has been a massive depopulation in the last fifty years, large tracts of the city are completely empty and people are seriously considering urban farming or land banking strategies. here it makes sense. but why on earth would anybody build the massive sort of infrastructure you would need for urban farming in densely populated cities like new york? the environmental cost of building such structures considerably reduces the benefit you achieve in the long run. dr. dickson despommier needs to descend from the ivory tower.
I agree with jafidler. it would def. make more sense to see 2-storey type structures built for farming in the farming region of the US. I mean the land is there, and structures would not have to be so "intense", but rather you could have more structures (wind capturing/wind mills, and greenhouses) to help facilitate the crops, whilst keeping the temperature regulated (esp. during those cold months).
I mean I like the idea, but to do it in a city such as NYC, just doesn't seem to make sense.
Nah odb they didn't figure any crop failure into their calculations, but you would figure in such a controlled environment that kind of thing would be minimal. I also agree that NYC is probably the wrong location for these things but I could see one going up in say, Atlanta or even Dubai.
There would still be some crop failure, so that caluculation would be unrealistic. There are mistakes in any business venture, and I'd bet that there would be a few seasons where the environmental controlls would go haywire, or someone would let some funky bug into the place, or some spinach would get e-coli, or something. But yeah, the failure rate would be far less than that of a typical farm.
i cant remeber where i saw this but IT was a new city...all buildings are the same hight...does matter what height just as long as they are the same....every building had a rice patty on its roof!!!
-also i saw this futuristic video about 2yrs ago...very exciting for the future of architecture, urban design and engineering...the begining is kinda lame but then they get into the real urban design of the city of melbourne Austrailia ( these cool lil APM's flying all over the city in a matter of seconds)
i second (or third or fourth or whatever) the dubai idea--maybe they could slightly offset the negative environmental costs of building indoor ski slopes by building vertical farms. could make sense that in a desert they would need to build indoor farms anyways--are there any crops produced in the UAE or anywhere else in the persian gulf for that matter?
on a slightly related note, i was speaking with someone recently from a firm starting to do a lot of work in the UAE and he seemed to think that the next wave of work that will come out of dubai, etc. will have to be more rational than the first few waves. He claimed that there is not as much money going around as there was.
Perhaps urban farms are they way to deal with these issues--desires to be iconic/radical, to build the tallest, most interesting structures, and the need to be more economical, rational, and perhaps even more ecologically sensitive.
by the way, the mixed use urban farm tower by the french guy on the urban farm website is pretty sweet, i really dig that design.
perhaps the urban farm could be combined w/ mvrdv's pig city to make a complete high rise food city, w/ all food groups featured. the cow towers could have automated milk pumpers where the homogenization process is enabled by gravity as it shoots down pipes to the milk trucks on the ground.
ooh...ooh....forget all that...actually put everything in a giant pyramid (maybe foster could design it?) w/ the food groups in their proper position. then the production of food could more adequately align w/ the proper consumption of food.
i wonder if there are steps taken to accomodate the mexican fruit pickers in the machine? because that guy in the rendering sure looks like doesn't know what to do with the lemons.
joking aside,
the idea is okay but it is waay ahead of its time necessity wise. agricultural sector could sure use the money to irrigate a lot of unused or drying lands for farming.
in california's central valley which is the most fertile land in usa, they sure could use the vertical structures to house people to stop alarming disappearance of the farmland in favor of gated community spread.
but anyway, when an idea is evaluated, all the tangents should be considered. not just the wow aspect.
this very idea is not new. but i appreciate the study.
I like the idea of urban farming, but this hi-tech solution seems a ways off to me, although it might start to become feasible in a place like dubai where there is no arable land and they seem willing to fund anything. There are more attainable ideas right now. An interesting organization I was alerted to through Cabinet Magazine's Fruits issue was an organiation called "Fallen Fruit" It is attempting to catalog all the free public fruit in Los Angeles. Taking this idea further, many street trees in America's citys could become fruit trees. City maintenance departments don't like it because they have to clean up, but it could definitely help out the homeless, and even supplment the diets of urbanites who don't get their fruits and veggies between dinners of pub grub and beers.
One of the most fascinating spaces I went to in Rome was the church of Santa Sabina, the oldest bascilica in Rome intact more or less in its original space. Went to mass there one sunday and no one was in the church. Went to the orange grove next to the church where tons of people were picking the fruit, hanging out, and socializing. I like the idea of landscape giving back, rather than merely consuming resources.
i like the idea of using urban landscape to grow fruit. Think of how many rooftops we could be growing stuff on, and all those dead looking trees we could be growing stuff on.
well, if you notice on the right side of the section diagram, there's chickens in there. And the people in Griffith Park (LA) are compaigning for goats, so you might just get your wish!
r- the hanging garden of toronto is a better name then sky famr. still, it's very very cool and I would live there or have my office with my own private garden outside!!! hmm, I'd rather be design these then living in one...
just think of the fun rotating crops in that place... only problem is most pollinators, don't fly that high up, so you'd need to bring the bees and other bugs up the elevator and then let them go...
Vancouver may be the first on the block with urban agriculture. LAtimes
Municipal planners have crafted a set of "urban agriculture" conditions for a new downtown neighborhood: Southeast False Creek, an 80-acre mixed-use community springing up on the former site of a shipyard.
Developers will be required to include "edible landscaping" and productive food garden spaces for rooftops and balconies. In the fall, planners will expand the False Creek policy to include such guidelines for all new multifamily projects in Vancouver...
The Southeast False Creek conditions require shared garden plots for 30% of the neighborhood's residential units that lack access to balconies or patios of at least 100 square feet. False Creek buildings also will have a maximum of 12 stories to increase green space and sun exposure. Plans call for fruit trees and raised beds on rooftops, courtyards lined with blueberry bushes, and balcony trellises to support fruit-bearing vines.
whoo, sounds interesting. Like a less idealistic, more workeable scheme than some we've posted (and admittedly drooled over) above. Kind of like Edible Estates on a community-wide scale.
Where I grew up it was extremely common for people to have fruit trees growing in their yards. We didn't buy citrus from the grocery store for a good 7 years there, when we lived in a house that had a couple dozen of them, and in fact gave around 2000 pounds of fruit to the local food bank each year (and still had plenty left over for ourselves). My mom and I grew at various times tomatoes, corn, beans, and carrots, and frankly it was pretty easy and fun. So the more purely decorative landscaping in Los Angeles is a little strange to me still. If you're going to put your water into the ground, it'd be nice to get something back from it other than visual pretties.
guys, this has been going in in detroit for over a decade. as far as the highrises go, didn't mvrdv design several of these a long time ago? and haven't the japanese been talking about this idea for a ruthlessly long time? what planet are you on? these concepts are nothing new you know.
bossman, i think after going to michigan where it seemed every other studio project was about urban farming you grow numb to it. i seriously hope for the school's sake that whoever was pushing that stuff has gotten over it.
it's also big at university of detroit mercy school of architecture. dean steven vogel has done some more advanced work on the topic incorporating layers of history and a more sophisticated approach to long-term urban planning than your typical "let's plant the empty lots" approach. an article on vogel's work.
uh, no its not new. but we still like talking about growing stuff in the city... oh, wait- cities got started because they had a surplus of food from the invention of agriculture, so us human beans have been farming in cities for longer then we've been writing.
Oh, are we only allowed to discuss new things? Wow. The forum will turn very quiet if that is indeed the case.
Anyway, other urban adventures: St. Louis is trying to go inner city organic. It's small, but it's nice to see that cities are discovering the benefits of local farming.
Also, I've been thinking about the streets I ride by every morning: every house has at least one tree in it's yard, and usually two on the city greenway between the sidewalk and the street located in front of each house. I wonder what it would take for the city to plant oranges instead of Jacarandas, or lemons instead of Ficus? There's so much green space that's city-owned, city-maintained.... would it be that much more work to take care of fruit trees? Particularly since the people in those neighborhoods would do most of the actual picking of fruit on their own, it seems like a small change that could do a lot of good.
no, your not only allowed to discuss new things. but urban farming is passe. you are not allowed to talk about passe things. it's for your own good, and i'm just looking out for you.
how can you say that urban farms are passe??? prius (hmm how to pluralize) are passe because everybody and their dog has one. who has an urban farm????
If you want to talk about lame, then go start your own thread!!!!
Urban Farming
Imagine if you will, converting New York City skyscrapers into crop farms:
Article may be found here:
http://nymag.com/news/features/30020/
From a realists standpoint it seems highly impractical considering how much high-rises cost with how cheap agriculture products are (except narcotics, a weed/coke/opium tower would be quite profitable). This sounds like an archology minus people.
I would love it if Dubai threw some money at this. They've got money to burn- I agree with Apurimac that there's a long way to go before these are economically feasible so it'd be nice for oil money to fund some R+D.
The renders are pretty charming and there's a certain simplicity to it that suggests that it'd work
The whole solar rights thing needs to be carefully considered before throwing these things up everywhere- you wouldn't want your crop tower shaded.
On a sort of tangent- I was introduced to a charming little technology called Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) that are solar cells injected with a dye to absorb all but a specific wavelength range which is transmitted/reflected. The result is a solar cell that comes in varying colors:
Well if you put together some of the research done at Clemson University on the photomorphogenesis of plants due to the influence of alterations in the ratio of red-far red light experienced- you could theorize that by combining DSSC using the appropriate color dyes you could affect crop growth.
To be more specific- red mulch (tarps) were laid around strawberry plants in a Clemson study. The reflected red light increased the yield and size of the berries. Blue mulch affected the flavor of basil (if I remember right). Tomatoes respond similarly to strawberries and can be manipulated to improve yield.
The benefit offered by fusing DSSC with urban agriculture is the idea that you could be producing energy from the same sunrays that you're using to grow plants resulting in a greater net efficiency. Further- the introduction of color into the appearance of solar cells opens up a whole new world of aesthetic potential.
Actually upon further research at verticalfarm.com it appears that alot of bases have been covered as far as costs are concerned. The math they did shows that a verticle farm would generate profits at approx 12 million per year, which would mean the building could pay for itself (an estimated 83 mil, which sounds low for high-rise steel construction but what do i know) in 7 years and after that you'd be making around 12 million in profit annually. That sounds like a sweet deal to me, put 10 of those towers up and you could be making 120 million and you wouldn't have to worry about crops going bad or anything like that. Of course in NYC you'd probably have to spend a big chunk of change just on land, and I'm pretty sure apartment towers would probably be more profitable but i could actually see this working in a city with lower property values.
jBond--that sounds like pretty amazing research...even just finding out about the solar cells themselves could be pretty influential in convincing more architects about their feasibility as a cladding material--one common complaint about pv cells is "but they're so ugly..."
can you have cells dyed completely one color, or are thy only available in tie-dyed colors--which would be very cool also. stained glass for the 21st century.
apurimac--haven't had the opportunity to check out the numbers myself, but it'd be interesting to see how much crop failure they've worked into those numbers. would it be something akin to traditional hydroponically grown fruits/veggies?
o d b
the image I showed is just an example cell of the various color dyes that have been developed- the actual cells could be more monochrome to make recharging them (swapping out the dye which has to happen every 10 or so years? maybe longer, I forget....) easier.
Right now the efficiencies of DSSC are in the neighborhood of 6 percent which is a long way from the 18% of the latest PV's... but in the year 2000...
seems like a colossal waste of money and time. in midwestern cities like detroit and cleveland where there has been a massive depopulation in the last fifty years, large tracts of the city are completely empty and people are seriously considering urban farming or land banking strategies. here it makes sense. but why on earth would anybody build the massive sort of infrastructure you would need for urban farming in densely populated cities like new york? the environmental cost of building such structures considerably reduces the benefit you achieve in the long run. dr. dickson despommier needs to descend from the ivory tower.
Food Not Lawns and Food Not Bombs are big where i am.
I would rather see more Edible Estates.
I agree with jafidler. it would def. make more sense to see 2-storey type structures built for farming in the farming region of the US. I mean the land is there, and structures would not have to be so "intense", but rather you could have more structures (wind capturing/wind mills, and greenhouses) to help facilitate the crops, whilst keeping the temperature regulated (esp. during those cold months).
I mean I like the idea, but to do it in a city such as NYC, just doesn't seem to make sense.
clean safe water will always be in question.
it would be cool to see round trellised greenhouse skyscrapers or some sort though.
Nah odb they didn't figure any crop failure into their calculations, but you would figure in such a controlled environment that kind of thing would be minimal. I also agree that NYC is probably the wrong location for these things but I could see one going up in say, Atlanta or even Dubai.
There would still be some crop failure, so that caluculation would be unrealistic. There are mistakes in any business venture, and I'd bet that there would be a few seasons where the environmental controlls would go haywire, or someone would let some funky bug into the place, or some spinach would get e-coli, or something. But yeah, the failure rate would be far less than that of a typical farm.
there's always X factors, and its those X factors that typically make or break business ventures
urban farm tomatoes (roof deck) 9.99lb
uf lettuce (fresh from 8th floor) 7.59 ea.
uf watermelon 6.99 lb. (corner window grown)
uf eggplant 12.39 lb. (5 lb. limit per customer)
uf townhouse raised chicken 18.99 ea (naturally boneless)
uf mushrooms (basement raised) 22.99 pac.
i cant remeber where i saw this but IT was a new city...all buildings are the same hight...does matter what height just as long as they are the same....every building had a rice patty on its roof!!!
-also i saw this futuristic video about 2yrs ago...very exciting for the future of architecture, urban design and engineering...the begining is kinda lame but then they get into the real urban design of the city of melbourne Austrailia ( these cool lil APM's flying all over the city in a matter of seconds)
2050 Virtual Blueprint
i second (or third or fourth or whatever) the dubai idea--maybe they could slightly offset the negative environmental costs of building indoor ski slopes by building vertical farms. could make sense that in a desert they would need to build indoor farms anyways--are there any crops produced in the UAE or anywhere else in the persian gulf for that matter?
on a slightly related note, i was speaking with someone recently from a firm starting to do a lot of work in the UAE and he seemed to think that the next wave of work that will come out of dubai, etc. will have to be more rational than the first few waves. He claimed that there is not as much money going around as there was.
Perhaps urban farms are they way to deal with these issues--desires to be iconic/radical, to build the tallest, most interesting structures, and the need to be more economical, rational, and perhaps even more ecologically sensitive.
by the way, the mixed use urban farm tower by the french guy on the urban farm website is pretty sweet, i really dig that design.
perhaps the urban farm could be combined w/ mvrdv's pig city to make a complete high rise food city, w/ all food groups featured. the cow towers could have automated milk pumpers where the homogenization process is enabled by gravity as it shoots down pipes to the milk trucks on the ground.
ooh...ooh....forget all that...actually put everything in a giant pyramid (maybe foster could design it?) w/ the food groups in their proper position. then the production of food could more adequately align w/ the proper consumption of food.
that image has been shown by Bill McDonough for one of his china projects... the other source for things like that would be Arups EcoCities project...
I <3 trolls.
There is no such thing as an original idea.
Like i said, a hydroponics tower growing that stuff would be QUITE profitable.
LOL! I was just watching Up In Smoke this weekend.
i wonder if there are steps taken to accomodate the mexican fruit pickers in the machine? because that guy in the rendering sure looks like doesn't know what to do with the lemons.
joking aside,
the idea is okay but it is waay ahead of its time necessity wise. agricultural sector could sure use the money to irrigate a lot of unused or drying lands for farming.
in california's central valley which is the most fertile land in usa, they sure could use the vertical structures to house people to stop alarming disappearance of the farmland in favor of gated community spread.
but anyway, when an idea is evaluated, all the tangents should be considered. not just the wow aspect.
this very idea is not new. but i appreciate the study.
Soylent Green Is People!!!!
vado
you get LB a present yet?
I like the idea of urban farming, but this hi-tech solution seems a ways off to me, although it might start to become feasible in a place like dubai where there is no arable land and they seem willing to fund anything. There are more attainable ideas right now. An interesting organization I was alerted to through Cabinet Magazine's Fruits issue was an organiation called "Fallen Fruit" It is attempting to catalog all the free public fruit in Los Angeles. Taking this idea further, many street trees in America's citys could become fruit trees. City maintenance departments don't like it because they have to clean up, but it could definitely help out the homeless, and even supplment the diets of urbanites who don't get their fruits and veggies between dinners of pub grub and beers.
One of the most fascinating spaces I went to in Rome was the church of Santa Sabina, the oldest bascilica in Rome intact more or less in its original space. Went to mass there one sunday and no one was in the church. Went to the orange grove next to the church where tons of people were picking the fruit, hanging out, and socializing. I like the idea of landscape giving back, rather than merely consuming resources.
oh, the website for fallen fruit is www.fallenfruit.org Those in LA should check it out to find their next fix...
i grow dirt
a similar idea would be to map out all the Honey buckets (veggie oil dumpsters) for free fuel
only problem i see is once a certain level of people know there is not much left for all
i like the idea of using urban landscape to grow fruit. Think of how many rooftops we could be growing stuff on, and all those dead looking trees we could be growing stuff on.
another recent proposal for Toronto:
this would supposedly be equivilant to putting a thousand-acre farm in the middle of Toronto.
well, if you notice on the right side of the section diagram, there's chickens in there. And the people in Griffith Park (LA) are compaigning for goats, so you might just get your wish!
r- the hanging garden of toronto is a better name then sky famr. still, it's very very cool and I would live there or have my office with my own private garden outside!!! hmm, I'd rather be design these then living in one...
just think of the fun rotating crops in that place... only problem is most pollinators, don't fly that high up, so you'd need to bring the bees and other bugs up the elevator and then let them go...
i don't know that you could consider food grown in that air organic.
for the googley challenged...
i want goats too, tumbles!
my friend Michelle owns a rather famous pet goat named clark who has been spotted at times in silverlake...
hey killa, my inlaws may be buying a hobby farm soon and are looking to get off the grid, we may have the opportunity to double team the project...
Goats are funny little animals, so I am all for them, wherever they want to go. I like their cheese.
That sky farm project is wicked cool!
Goats are funny little animals, so I am all for them, wherever they want to go. I like their cheese.
That sky farm project is wicked cool!
I don't know how that happened. sorry.
beta- sound like a great plan, I'll find a spot for the compost heap and you can design the barn!
Vancouver may be the first on the block with urban agriculture.
LAtimes
Municipal planners have crafted a set of "urban agriculture" conditions for a new downtown neighborhood: Southeast False Creek, an 80-acre mixed-use community springing up on the former site of a shipyard.
Developers will be required to include "edible landscaping" and productive food garden spaces for rooftops and balconies. In the fall, planners will expand the False Creek policy to include such guidelines for all new multifamily projects in Vancouver...
The Southeast False Creek conditions require shared garden plots for 30% of the neighborhood's residential units that lack access to balconies or patios of at least 100 square feet. False Creek buildings also will have a maximum of 12 stories to increase green space and sun exposure. Plans call for fruit trees and raised beds on rooftops, courtyards lined with blueberry bushes, and balcony trellises to support fruit-bearing vines.
whoo, sounds interesting. Like a less idealistic, more workeable scheme than some we've posted (and admittedly drooled over) above. Kind of like Edible Estates on a community-wide scale.
Where I grew up it was extremely common for people to have fruit trees growing in their yards. We didn't buy citrus from the grocery store for a good 7 years there, when we lived in a house that had a couple dozen of them, and in fact gave around 2000 pounds of fruit to the local food bank each year (and still had plenty left over for ourselves). My mom and I grew at various times tomatoes, corn, beans, and carrots, and frankly it was pretty easy and fun. So the more purely decorative landscaping in Los Angeles is a little strange to me still. If you're going to put your water into the ground, it'd be nice to get something back from it other than visual pretties.
guys, this has been going in in detroit for over a decade. as far as the highrises go, didn't mvrdv design several of these a long time ago? and haven't the japanese been talking about this idea for a ruthlessly long time? what planet are you on? these concepts are nothing new you know.
bossman, i think after going to michigan where it seemed every other studio project was about urban farming you grow numb to it. i seriously hope for the school's sake that whoever was pushing that stuff has gotten over it.
it's also big at university of detroit mercy school of architecture. dean steven vogel has done some more advanced work on the topic incorporating layers of history and a more sophisticated approach to long-term urban planning than your typical "let's plant the empty lots" approach. an article on vogel's work.
uh, no its not new. but we still like talking about growing stuff in the city... oh, wait- cities got started because they had a surplus of food from the invention of agriculture, so us human beans have been farming in cities for longer then we've been writing.
Oh, are we only allowed to discuss new things? Wow. The forum will turn very quiet if that is indeed the case.
Anyway, other urban adventures: St. Louis is trying to go inner city organic. It's small, but it's nice to see that cities are discovering the benefits of local farming.
Also, I've been thinking about the streets I ride by every morning: every house has at least one tree in it's yard, and usually two on the city greenway between the sidewalk and the street located in front of each house. I wonder what it would take for the city to plant oranges instead of Jacarandas, or lemons instead of Ficus? There's so much green space that's city-owned, city-maintained.... would it be that much more work to take care of fruit trees? Particularly since the people in those neighborhoods would do most of the actual picking of fruit on their own, it seems like a small change that could do a lot of good.
no, your not only allowed to discuss new things. but urban farming is passe. you are not allowed to talk about passe things. it's for your own good, and i'm just looking out for you.
how can you say that urban farms are passe??? prius (hmm how to pluralize) are passe because everybody and their dog has one. who has an urban farm????
If you want to talk about lame, then go start your own thread!!!!
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