We recently stumbled upon architect Brandon Martella and are very impressed with his designs which integrate agriculture into them. Check out these innovative designs by this talented architect:

San Diego Farm Tower

Now this is a cool Building Integrated Agriculture Project! Check out how the building mixes farming into the structure sensibly and beautifully (this one is our favorites for sure). We are firm believers that successfully integrating agriculture into buildings must include using the farming systems for heating, cooling, and ventilation. There is not a ton of info about how this building’s systems work in writing so be sure to look at the image below for some technical details about its components.

Farm tower is located in a vertical community of tourist resources and developer condos divided by a public promenade. The new tower aims at activating a dead corridor that is underutilized and keying in to an international audience with a daily influx of travelers utilizing the strand of tourist attractions located along the waterfront.  The adjacent Children Museum and its motto of Think, Play, Create will be embraced with a second motto of Live, Grow, Share to foster a new level of social interface.

The open air market designed by Brandon Martella will become a place for local vendors to sell an assortment of products along with fresh produce grown in the farm tower and direct vicinity of San Diego’s urban center. The market will become a specimen of culture that dramatically contrasts the a-typical American means of consumption and commerce, an apparatus enriched with a sense of local, and a place for the community to gather. As the 24th largest convention center in North America, the giant wall blocking San Diego from its southern waterfront brings in an estimated 1.4 billion annually to the local community.  It is an economic powerhouse and is expanding with a 3rd annex. The sites direct adjacency will enable the farm tower to become a spectacle as this opportunity is not overlooked and a high level of activity will be harnessed. The critical moment with farm tower comes to life with a social exchange of farmer and resident. Ten stories above the surrounding community a 100′ void space in the farming’s southern exposure brings the residential user group out from their usual circulation space to create a critical moment of exchange.  Educational tours can come up from the street level to experience the city and the farm firsthand.

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Farm Tower in London
Another design by the architect intended for London proves how skilled he is at conceptualizing and designing the integration of farming systems into beautiful looking and functional buildings.

London farm tower designed by Brandon Martella rests on the south bank of the Thames River overlooking Potter’s Field. Like a tree the tower collects rainwater and solar energy to maintain survival. Wind is harvested through vertical axis turbines that align the perimeter structure. The residential programmed floors take advantage of cross ventilation through the use of operable windows and louvers while the hydroponic floors are a continual hydroponic system recycling the humid green house air content by collecting condensated water on the inside of the ETFE pillows and letting gravity bring the water down through the hydroponic racks.

Each farming level contains an open steel grating allowing the tower to function as a cooling stack between the residential and agricultural program. At night the tower will glow as a beacon of new life, ironic to the historical burial grounds of Potter’s Field, creating a new opportunity for social sustainability, utilizing uv lighting to maintain 24/7 growing efficiencies.  With one million cubic feet of growable volume the tower can produce an average of 36.6 lbs of a wide variety of fruit and vegetable type per 100 sq ft to annually produce 1.5 million lbs of fresh fruit and vegetables, ultimately feeding 20% of London.

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YOU CAN ALWAYS FIND HIGHER RES IMAGES IN OUR FACEBOOK GALLERY.

We are big fans of this next urban farming concept because it combines effective urban agriculture with public spaces for the residents. Also, as it is much smaller than a vertical farm, the costs and risks involved are much lower. Check out the pics and let us know what you think!

Urban food production is not a new concept. We’ve seen countless designs here on eVolo for vertical farms, urban ecosystems, and arcologies, but French firm Zundel and Cristea has taken the urban farm concept in an entirely different direction. Instead of proposing a monumental project like a vertical farm, they put together a design for smaller urban farm centers planted throughout a city.

The centers are designed to grow food, process it, and some to even serve it in on site restaurants. On the inside bowls of the spiraling structures is the green space where various types of food and greenery is grown. Visitors and urban farmers would go out to the spirals to harvest and enjoy the green space. Food would then be taken into the superstructure and processed where it could be served or packaged and brought to market.

The small scale of each of the double spiral structures allow for Zundel and Cristea’s urban farms to be regional centers for the districts they individually serve, a sort of park and bazaar in one. Placing them in urban landscapes also reduces the green house emissions that would normally be needed to transport produce from rural farms to city centers. Centers would be topped with wind turbines as well, to create an energy sustainable landmark that is economically, socially, and agriculturally productive.

Zundel and Cristea designed their urban farms as a part of what they see as a shifting focus of city planning and architectural design from industrial functionality to the environmentally conscious and ecological. Their straightforward and refined design makes urban farming on a large scale a feasible element in the city of the future.

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THE FARMERY: BUY YOUR FOOD WHERE IT IS GROWN!

Ben Greene of the Farmery in Raleigh, NC, is currently fundraising on Kickstarter to build a combined hydroponic farm, mushroom growing space and food retail outlet from—you guessed it—reused shipping containers. It all looks quite lovely, and they have prototypes in place to prove it can be done.

It’s good to see The Farmery thinking beyond what they can grow themselves—and rather integrating with the local food economy and purchasing excess from the farmers market to sell at their store.

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Elite of Chicago will have indoor grown organics

The local foods movement thinks it has accomplished a tremendous feat that will prove how food crops can be grown indoors year round in a cold winter climate area of the country.

Slightly more than a year after the City of Chicago amended zoning codes to allow local urban agriculture, the city has moved to the “forefront of urban center food production by licensing Chicago’s first indoor (vertical) farm company, SkyyGreens Aquaponics,” it was announced this week.

SkyyGreens Aquaponics became the first and, at present, only licensed indoor farm in Chicago with blessings from the mayor and others who see this as creating new jobs while meeting the demand for fresh local organic foods year round.

SkyyGreens’ founders claim to have researched and tested best practices for growing produce indoors for the past 12 months. “The team also experimented with lighting technology and various aquaponic/hydroponic methods to determine the optimal indoor environment to grow produce,” the company noted. It also reported that tasting sessions of produce grown under the system to be used indoors had chefs and others begging for more such produce.

“So, the SkyyGreens team next tackled the business problem. Can an indoor farm startup become a scalable, profitable enterprise? SkyyGreens put their business assumptions to the test this past summer in the startup capital of the world, Silicon Valley, Calif. SkyyGreens presented their business model to a group of venture capitalists and ‘super’ angel investors as part of a business plan competition where SkyyGreens tied for first place. This gave the SkyyGreens team additional confidence that their indoor farm was ready for the market,” according to the company announcement.

Now the goal of economically and profitably providing organic produce in a major northern climate city is ready to be tested. Much of the success naturally has to come from establishing a price point premium that buyers will pay. These indoor grown crops will be for the elite with disposable income to pay higher prices for food.

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Illustrations of the Plantagon Greenhouse that is being built in Linköping, Sweden. The glass facade is facing the south and the building will be 54 meters high. Construction is planned to start in 2013, and the greenhouse will be ready for food production in 2014. The greenhouse will also house a Center of Excellence for Urban Agriculture. (C) Plantagon. Illustration: Sweco.

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Hello Building-Integrated Agriculture Enthusiasts! It has been one year since the launch of this blog and we are happy to report that dense urban agriculture has truly been experiencing a boom over the past year. We have reported on a lot of companies and projects that were only ideas that are now being built and implemented throughout the world. We will say it again: we are on the verge of a sustainable urban agriculture revolution. To celebrate, we recommend that you read this WSJ article on the phenomenon of building-integrated agriculture and some of the projects that have come to life over the past year.

Future of Agriculture May Be Up

The seeds of an agricultural revolution are taking root in cities around the world—a movement that boosters say will change the way that urbanites get their produce and solve some of the world’s biggest environmental problems along the way.

It’s called vertical farming, and it’s based on one simple principle: Instead of trucking food from farms into cities, grow it as close to home as possible—in urban greenhouses that stretch upward instead of sprawling outward.

The idea is flowering in many forms. There’s the 12-story triangular building going up in Sweden, where plants will travel on tracks from the top floor to the bottom to take advantage of sunlight and make harvesting easier. Then there’s the onetime meatpacking plant in Chicago where vegetables are grown on floating rafts, nourished by waste from nearby fish tanks. And the farms dotted across the U.S. that hang their crops in the air, spraying the roots with nutrients, so they don’t have to bring in soil or water tanks for the plants.

However vertical farming is implemented, advocates say the immediate benefits will be easy to see. There won’t be as many delivery trucks guzzling fuel and belching out exhaust, and city dwellers will get easier access to fresh, healthy food.

Looking further, proponents say vertical farming could bring even bigger and more sweeping changes. Farming indoors could reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides, which pollute the environment in agricultural runoff. Preserving or reclaiming more natural ecosystems like forests could help slow climate change. And the more food we produce indoors, the less susceptible we are to environmental crises that disrupt crops and send prices skyrocketing, like the drought that devastated this year’s U.S. corn crop.

Dickson Despommier, a microbiology professor at Columbia University who developed the idea of vertical farming with students in 1999, thinks vertical farming will become more and more attractive as climate change drives up the cost of conventional farming and technological advances make greenhouse farming cheaper. In fact, he hopes the world will be able to produce half of its food in vertical farms in 50 years.

Then “a significant portion of farmland could be abandoned,” he says. “Ecosystem functions would rapidly improve, and the rate of global warming would slow down.”

A host of vertical farms are up and running in the U.S. and overseas, and others are under construction. Some are backed by nonprofits aiming to promote environmental causes or local job creation. Others will be for-profit ventures meant to meet demand for local produce. And some, like one in South Korea, are being funded by governments looking for ways to boost domestic food security.

So far, vertical farms are producing only a small amount of food. Advocates are still developing different building designs and growing techniques to boost the efficiency of cultivating food indoors. And a proven business model based on the concept has yet to emerge.

One ambitious project under construction is trying to address all of those challenges at once. At 12 stories, the triangular farm in Linköping, Sweden, will be one of the tallest vertical farms in the world—most max out at several stories—and will use innovative ways to generate revenue. Not only will the company behind the farm, Sweden’s Plantagon, sell its produce at a local farmer’s market, but it also will lease out office space on most floors.

Another unique feature: Outside the office windows, on the building’s southern face, a mechanical track enclosed in its own layer of glass will carry growing plants from the top of the building to the bottom floor. The arrangement is meant to give the plants even exposure to sunlight and allow Plantagon to perform all of its planting and harvesting in one place—on the ground floor. (After planting, a normal vertical elevator takes the boxed plants to the top floor to start their voyage down.) The company plans to produce 300 to 500 metric tons of leafy greens like bok choy a year.

As for the price tag, “it’s much more expensive, of course, to build a greenhouse vertical than to build a normal greenhouse,” says Hans Hassle, Plantagon’s chief executive. But the planned revenue streams will help make up for that, and energy costs will be lower because the setup will use waste from various sources—such as heat from a nearby power plant and biogas produced through conversion of the building’s own organic garbage. All told, the planned energy-saving measures will reduce the building’s energy use by at least 30% to 50%, Mr. Hassle says.

Mr. Hassle says the company’s next greenhouse will be either a demonstration model in Shanghai or a research facility in Singapore. These are good venues for the idea, he says, because they’re highly dense and urbanized societies that already need to produce more food locally.

In the U.S., vertical farms are sprouting in urban areas across the country, some in old buildings that have been re-purposed for agriculture. One operation called the Plant is producing vegetables in a three-story former meatpacking facility on Chicago’s South Side.

The farm grows vegetables on small rafts floating on water, which is filled with nutrients from waste produced by fish in a separate tank—a setup called aquaponics. Light comes from lamps designed to emit the proper wavelengths for plant growth. The Plant is also designing a growing system in which crops could grow sticking out at an upward angle from vertical boards, with nutrients provided to the plant roots by water dripping down a film from pipes near the ceiling.

The Plant was founded by John Edel, a 43-year-old Chicago native who has led other projects to renovate and reuse urban buildings. The facility currently rents out parts of its space to tenants including three farmers and two bakeries and plans to find more; it also intends to open a shared retail area where the tenants can sell their goods.

Other farms around the country use different techniques designed to save space, reduce water consumption and even avoid the need for soil. Farms in warehouses and other buildings in Seattle, Chicago, upstate New York and New Jersey, among other places, use an aeroponics system from AeroFarms of Ithaca, N.Y. The method involves growing plants with their roots hanging in the air, where they can be sprayed with water and nutrients.

Omega Garden Inc., of Qualicum Beach, British Columbia, sells a planting device called Volksgarden, a rotating cylinder four feet in diameter and two feet long. Plants grow in a circle around the inside of the cylinder. As the device rotates, their roots dip into a tray holding a liquid solution that provides water and nutrients. A light runs horizontally through the cylinder to nourish the crops.

Green Spirit Farms LLC is using the system in New Buffalo, Mich., in a former plastics-injection facility. The farm plans to fill the space with Volksgarden units stacked three levels high, says Green Spirit site manager Ben Wiggins.

Still, many agricultural experts aren’t sold on the idea of vertical farming. The core argument against it: Conventional farms are the simplest and most efficient places to produce food. Growing food indoors, using artificial lights and other special equipment, means more effort and expense—and cancels out any benefits of being close to customers, critics say.

That’s why George Monbiot, a writer and environmental activist based in Oxford, England, says there’s “no prospect” that more complicated vertical-farming techniques could contribute substantially to world food production. As for those vertical farming systems that will consume extra energy to power equipment like artificial lights, he says, “Even if you are taking the energy from renewable sources, there are better ways of using that renewable energy.”

Likewise, R. Ford Denison, an adjunct professor of agricultural ecology at the University of Minnesota, thinks the energy use from vertical farms would cancel out any fuel savings from transportation. “Food transport from farm to store is a tiny fraction of total agricultural energy use,” he says. So if vertical farms use even small amounts of energy to run their systems, or if consumers have to use extra fuel traveling to urban farmers’ markets, it “would swamp any energy savings in transporting food to the cities.”

Backers say the comparison between conventional and vertical farming isn’t apples to apples, since the government heavily subsidizes expenses including crop insurance for traditional agriculture, greatly reducing the costs involved and the risks that farmers face from unpredictable weather conditions.

But boosters say the equation will very likely change as severe weather makes indoor farming a safer and more reliable alternative to regular growing. Not only will the rising cost of conventional farming make vertical farms look better in comparison, they say, but vertical farms in some places could end up getting subsidies.

“If we imagine that vertical farming is going to become part of a nation’s food-security program, then naturally this part of the industry needs subsidies,” Plantagon’s Mr. Hassle says.

Dr. Despommier, who is also an adviser to Plantagon, acknowledges that energy use, particularly in artificial lighting, remains a challenge for some vertical farms. But he says the lighting industry has made significant progress in recent years on reducing power consumption for specialized lights to grow plants, and researchers continue to work on the problem.

More broadly, he argues that the idea of vertical farming on a large scale will seem increasingly realistic as techniques evolve. He cites cellphones and plasma-screen televisions as examples of innovations that were unimaginable before their time.

“You have to start small and you have to start at the research level before you jump into the commercial aspect of this thing, but that’s the way all these ideas start,” Dr. Despommier says. “Everything we have in this world of ours started out crazy.”

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This is a really cool example of a horizontal farm - The Zuidkas, by Architectenbureau Paul de Ruiter from the Netherlands. The post makes the case for horizontal vs. vertical farming as perhaps a more realistic opportunity for integrated urban agriculture. Using rooftop greenhouses, along with captured waste heat from buildings, shortening the distance from food to fork and incorporating mixed use into the buildings.

This decentralized method seems to make sense, although it’d be interesting to see if you could actually grow enough food to sustain the residents of the building using just the available rooftop area. Thus the hybrid between terrestrial farms and intensive vertical farms in one location may be hundreds and thousands of these interventions… and the good thing, the concept, albeit stylized here, could be pragmatically retrofitted to buildings (in the Zabar’s model from NYC).

Some info about the interesting opportunities for closed loop systems that use building inputs and outputs: “The design includes a glass shell that covers the configuration of the ground level and naves, creating a variety of climate buffers, that will work as an intermediate zone that naturally tempers the effects of the outside climate. The shell surrounding the building strongly reduces the surface area responsible for the loss of heat during the winter and cold during the summer. The buffer area facing south functions as a sun lounge for the homes. Thanks to the buffer effect, the loss of heat in the winter is reduced. In the summer, the sun lounge cools the adjacent areas thanks to the stack effect. In this process, fresh air is sucked in and constantly circulated. It will be possible to open the exterior shell, to prevent the area behind the shell from becoming too hot.”

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Twenty years ago, critics scoffed at the ideas of cell phones and plasma-screen television but today they are common place around the world.  Like those innovations that spawned billion-dollar industries, proponents of vertical farming today say their idea will do the same 50 years from now or sooner.

But critics, like those two decades ago, don’t see that happening. Still, it is happening already in several U.S. cities, Canada, Sweden, South Korea and shortly in Shanghai and Singapore. Large populations are necessary for the vertical farming concept to grow.

The vertical farming concept is simple: Instead of trucking food from farms into cities, grow the food closer to the customer. That is done by constructing large vertical greenhouses. The immediate impact, say pro-vertical farmers, will be the elimination of truck fuel exhausts and easier access by customers to fresher food.

Additionally, vertical farming needs less ground area, less water consumption and won’t need soil at all.

By eliminating traditional farm properties, those sites are expected to be gobbled up real estate developers for new residential, commercial or industrial communities. Or they may even be turned into non-development usage such as public parks and natural green zones. That would greatly help the environment, argue the pro-vertical farm groups.

Anti-vertical farming sources quickly counter that constructing large greenhouses to grow fresher food will be far more expensive than traditional farming costs. The expense of artificial light and other special equipment to aid the indoor food growing process will also make vertical farming non cost-effective, critics argue.

But the pro-vertical farming forces come right back and argue that new revenues from indoor growing will lower greenhouse energy costs. They also note the greenhouses will use waste from various sources, including heat from a nearby power plant and bio-gas produced through converting the greenhouse’s own organic garbage.

Although production from vertical farming to date is small, proponents point to Seattle, Chicago, New Buffalo, MI, Ithaca, NY and other upstate New York locations and New Jersey were vertical farming is under way.  In Canada, Qualicum Beach, British Columbia has a vertical farm.

In Sweden, what is believed to be the largest vertical farm in the world to date is under construction in Linkoping.  The 12-story building is called Plantagon. Developers plan to lease non-food-growing space on the building’s upper floors.

Columbia University microbiology professor Dickson Despommier is credited by many as he father of the vertical farming concept.  He is supposed to have developed the idea with his students in 1999.

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SKYGREENS OPENS FIRST VERTICAL FARM IN SINGAPORE!

Singapore now has its first commercial vertical farm, which means more local options for vegetables.

The technique uses aluminium towers that are as tall as nine metres, and vegetables are grown in troughs at multiple levels.

The technique utilises space better — an advantage for land-scarce Singapore.

Sky Greens farm first started working on the prototype in 2009, and has opened a 3.65-hectare farm in Lim Chu Kang.

It produces three types of vegetables which are currently available only at FairPrice Finest supermarkets.

They cost 10 to 20 cents more than vegetables from other sources.

Despite the higher prices, the greens have been flying off supermarket shelves.

Ms Ivy Lim, a customer, said: “(The price) is not a very big difference, it’s just marginal… I think as compared to organic (produce), the price is very attractive.”

“The response has been very good. Even before the official launch, the vegetables were sold out in the last few days,” said Mr Tng Ah Yiam, managing director of group purchasing, merchandising and international trading at FairPrice.

“Actually, the store manager called me and said we need more vegetables. So I think it’s a good sign that the consumer supports local vegetables.”

But prices may drop as the farm ramps up supply.

The farm currently has 120 vertical towers, and hopes to increase the number to 300 by next year.

This will increase its current daily supply of vegetables from 0.5 tonnes to two tonnes by 2013.

“The challenge will be to get investors interested. This type of farm needs (relatively) higher capital,” said Dr Ngiam Tong Tau, the chairman of Sky Greens. “This is a new system, so people need to be trained (and) we need to attract people to come here to work.”

The farm’s expansion is expected to cost some S$27 million.

Currently, about seven per cent of Singapore’s vegetables are grown locally.

It is hoped with more innovative farming methods, it will help meet the target of 10 per cent in the future.

“We are always looking at ways to increase our sources of food supply and if we can produce some in Singapore, then that can go some way to meet local demand,” said Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Senior Minister of State for National Development and Trade and Industry.

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A company that’s building commercial vertical farms specifically for organic aquaculture (fish production), is getting a loan from Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq:WFMI), one of its biggest customers.

FarmedHere’s indoor vertical farm, in Bedford Park, Illinois, is  the first USDA Certified Organic aquaponic indoor farm.

And its the only company licensed by the state to grow fish indoors.

Whole Foods’ $100,000 loan will help the three-year-old company expand into a 90,000-square-foot building,  providing the urban farm with another 150,000 square foot of vertical growing space and creating about 200 jobs.

The vertical farm also grows produce, which it’s been selling to Whole Foods stores in the Chicago area since 2011. The expansion will increase the supply of locally grown, organic herbs and vegetables to Whole Foods by about a million pounds a year.

The company also sells to grocery buyers, retailers and restaurants across Chicago.

FarmedHere’s produce is usually grown within 15 miles of customers, reducing the spoilage typically associated with shipping vegetables thousand of miles.

This third vertical farm uses two different systems that allow it to grow produce and fish in a controlled environment year-round.

An aquaponic system produces herbs such as basil and other greens, while grow tilapia fish at the same time. An aeroponic system cultivates leafy greens, such as arugula and watercress,  in growing cycles of 18 days, compared with 60 days or more in conventional agriculture.

Both systems are extremely energy and water efficient, virtually eliminating water runoff and preserving over 97% of fresh water.

“The ingenuity of FarmedHere’s approach to growing produce will help shape the future of not only agriculture, but also urban planning,” says Michael Bashaw, Whole Foods Market Midwest Regional President. “We’re thrilled to support a company whose inventiveness is pioneering the increase of food production and access to fresh, local foods in Chicago.”

FarmedHere also runs Chicago’s first training program on city aquaponics in collaboration with Windy City Harvest.

Financing for the new facility comes from Whole Foods Market Local Producer Loan Program, which proves $10 million a year in low-interest loans to independent local farmers and food artisans. 

FarmedHere isn’t the only vertical farm in the Chicago area. The Plant is an innovative closed-looped operation taking shape in an abandoned warehouse in the heart of the meat-packing district. The operation is already growing greens, mushrooms and kombucha. It should be fully operational by 2016.

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The video above has already been featured on this blog and shows a trial vertical farm that already exists in Korea. Since this video was made, more progress has been made in Korea as they have identified Qatar as a country that they will collaborate with on vertical farming in arid regions. The article below is a news brief from the Gulf times that illustrates the new collaboration that is underway between the two countries.

South Korean developers of the “smart vertical farm” concept have expressed confidence that the technology could bring forth radical changes in the Middle East’s agricultural sector if implemented effectively.

“Officials of the Qatar National Food Security Programme have responded favourably to a presentation we have given in this regard,” South Korea’s Gyeonggi province governor,  Kim Moon-soo, told Gulf Times yesterday.
In Doha on a short official visit, the senior official said his team was awaiting further response from the Qatari authorities in order to move to the next phase of implementing the smart vertical farm project.

“Other countries too may have some hi-tech farming methods but ours is one of the most user-friendly options that could be successfully implemented in the Middle East where there is a shortage of arable land,” said Kim.

The vertical farming system, developed in the Gyeonggi province, has advantages like the back-up of solar energy, robot-based monitoring, application of LED lights and custom-made water recycling system among others.

The system would also help combat excessively hot and humid weather through the implementation of an effective air-conditioning technology in the multi-level farms.

The South Korean official was of the view that the concept would help reduce the production costs of agriculture drastically in the long-run.
“Initially one may possibly feel that importing food grains would be cheaper than producing them locally but in the long run it would not be certainly viable for a country which is depending mostly on imports to meet its growing food requirements,” he said.

The Korean governor also pointed out that huge sums were already being spent by Qatar for the desalination of water. “If such expenses are taken into consideration, vertical farming would certainly be cheaper for the country in coming years,” said Kim.

“To conserve energy, one uses renewable sources such as solar power and geothermal heat. Besides a new illumination system using natural light and LED was developed for plant cultivation.”

He explained the studies conducted by engineers had found approximately 60% energy could be saved compared to conventional structures through active and passive technologies such as insulation, chilled beam and hybrid solar and geothermal heat.

The Gyeonggi province official said the Korean developers of the vertical farms had received encouraging results from their pilot projects, each of which was backed by IT-based controlling systems.

One of the farms developed under the method has as many as 10 storeys.
“Since self-sufficiency in food is one of the long-cherished goals of Qatar, we are hopeful that the local authorities would not hesitate to implement the user-friendly project that we have developed,” Kim said.

Gyeonggi Agricultural Research and Extension Services director general Jae Wook Lim, who was part of the delegation which presented a host of small and medium enterprises (SME) projects at a seminar in Doha yesterday, affirmed that the vertical farm project that their team had proposed was at least 40% cheaper than its nearest alternative. 
“Moreover it requires less labour compared to options mooted by other countries,” he said.

Lim also pointed out that the economic feasibility studies conducted by his teams found vertical farms could produce approximately 1,200 units of vegetables a day with a break-even point of 500 units a day commercially in a vertical farm that occupies an area of 400sqm.
The team from Korea  hoped that through co-branded technology and knowhow in a localized vertical farm in Qatar with the effective co-operation between QNFSP and Gyeonggi province, it could create “more value-added products” in the Middle Eastern environment.
The industrially-advanced Gyeonggi province,  which encircles the South Korean capital Seoul, houses some of the main manufacturing facilities of  global companies such as as LG and Samsung.

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Rounding the corner onto Schenck Avenue in East New York, the staff of East New York Farms winced a little—the farm’s gate had been wrenched off its hinges and a port-a-potty was lying on one side, but things were not as bad as they might have been. The plants—particularly the long beans—were wind-beaten and crushed in places by fallen branches, but the greenhouse had protected many of the pepper plants and the bees were alive and well in their hives.

“A lot of trellising is down, but we’re almost done with the market season,” said agricultural coordinator Deborah Greig, who walked The Observer through the 1/2-acre farm. Willow branches littered the many varieties of pepper plants, but the plants themselves had been low enough to escape most of the wind’s fury. A large tree had toppled over by the back fence, but it was not a beloved one. Mostly, Ms. Greig had been worried about the bees. “I’m surprised they’re doing okay. It looks like just the brick got blown off the top of the hives,” she noted. In a few hours time, the port-a-potty had been righted, the farm manager was swinging an axe at the fallen tree and the non-profit was planning to hold its scheduled market, the last one of the season, the following afternoon.

East New York Farms after the hurricane.

The bees at Brooklyn Grange were not so lucky; most of the hives were swept away by the storm surge. “The bees got washed away, flooded out. They were on a pier in the Navy Yard. It was pretty devastating,” said Gwen Schantz, the rooftop farm’s chief operating officer. It was a significant loss: after a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise $22,000 this spring, the Grange had briefly boasted the city’s largest commercial apiary.

The Grange’s two gardens, located on top of an 11-story building in the Navy Yard and a 6-story building in Long Island City, had fared much better.

“They did great,” said Ms. Schantz. Frightened that the gusts whipping across the roofs might not only dislodge the plants, but the chicken’s penthouse coop, the farm staff had spent several days securing everything before the storm hit.

Gotham Greens, a rooftop greenhouse operation in Greenpoint, also said their plants were doing well. “we’re busy harvesting and sending out produce to our customers. Our greenhouse facility was unaffected by Sandy and out crops are in great shape,” CEO Viraj Puri emailed The Observer. 

The Red Hook Community Farm was under more than two feet of water during the storm, executive director Ian Marvy told us. Even the crops that remain after flooding are a total loss and cannot be sold or donated because of water pollution. The farm also lost two bee hives; it’s unclear how much of the equipment can be salvaged.

It is likely that flood waters also destroyed Battery Urban Farm in Lower Manhattan. Phones were not working and emails to staffers went unanswered, but reports of extensive flooding on the streets surrounding the farm leave little doubt that the agricultural operations is more than likely done for the season, if not longer.

It was a pattern that played out consistently across the city: the bees, birds and the plants withstood the gale’s winds, but not even the most diligent preparations could stop the floods. Although New York’s space-starved reliance on rooftop agriculture did prove an unexpected boon for operations like the Grange.

East New York Farm’s battered long beans.

And while Brooklynites sometimes take a drubbing for their D.I.Y. ways, having a more robust local food supply is looking more and more appealing after our near apocalypse. Especially when the governor, at a press conference, tells the storm-wearied public that extreme storms are the new normal, a fact that cannot be ignored when the city rebuilds. “Anyone who says there is not a dramatic change in weather patterns is denying reality,” Governor Andrew Cuomo warned.

That food security will be a more important issue in the coming years, as hurricanes and other extreme weather events batter the city, is no surprise to Elizabeth Bee Ayer, the co-manager of Bk Farmyards in Crown Heights. The Farmyards suffered moderate damage from Hurricane Sandy, which blew over collards and kale plants and dropped branches on several beds, although the farm’s bees, chickens and the majority of its produce were not fatally injured.

“Food security is a really big issue everyday for many New Yorkers who don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Ms. Ayer, who supports growing more local, organic foods to supplement the deliveries from major agricultural operations Upstate and on Long Island. “And now the climate is changing and it’s causing larger challenges.”

The farm has struggled with strange weather occurrences for the past three years, she told The Observer. Hail damaged plants in 2010, tropical storm Irene and the Halloween snowstorm destroyed crops last year and the warm winter of 2012 resulted in an uncommon number of pests.

“As urban farmers it’s something we notice, working outside you can really see it,” she said.

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Blackstone Market has been thoughtfully conceived as a critical piece in Boston’s emerging Market District. Together with the Haymarket pushcart vendors, the food purveyors on Blackstone Street, the Public Market in Parcel 7, and the nearby small-scale food shops of the North End, Blackstone Market will draw nearby residents and office workers, foodies, and tourists. This new market building on Parcel 9 will contain a ground-level market featuring farm-grown produce and products, destination and casual restaurants, a rooftop farm, and 50 residential rental units.

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Check out this innovative window garden design. Winner of the Red Dot award.

Herbow is a window planter ‘tray’ that enables people to grow small crops outside their windows while shielding their interior space from the rain. It enlarges the city’s planting area, enhances the view from buildings, and generates renewal.

Herbow is a window shelter concept designed with urban farming and city greening in mind. With it, people can grow herbs and small vegetables in pots beside their windows as if they were planting them in a garden. By swinging Herbow upwards, it becomes a window shelter that blocks the harsh sunlight and the rain. At the same time, the plants are watered and grow naturally.

An eave has been designed to extend over the shelter to stop water falling through the gap between Herbow and the window frame. Holes on two sides of Herbow allow for drainage of excess water. People can conveniently bring the pots inside for decoration or consumption. The city can be a greener landscape with fresher air when everyone grows their own vegetables on Herbow.

verticaltheory:

Live Screen by Danielle Trofe

Another incredible design by SOA architects.

Check out more here

fabriciomora:

• Architects: Laboratoire D’urbanisme Agricole
• Project: Launch Of Lua And Its Website

This concept vertical farm also includes a large living machine. Living machines consist of man-made wetlands to manage and clean waste water by mimicking natural systems. This project is interesting as it combines the evolving field of hydroponic food production, living machines, and rainwater collection. More images in high resolution can be found in our Building-Integrated Agriculture gallery.

Could a tall building be a living machine rather than a machine for living or working? What are the implications of not just going tall, but growing tall? Cornell University is currently undertaking a program to develop midrise housing for students and faculty on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. The initial mixed-use program calls for student dormitories, market-rate faculty housing and additional, leasable office space. Currently the residents of Roosevelt Island have little or no access to food in the immediate vicinity. Residents must go to Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens to buy groceries. What would happen if viable food systems were introduced to the island? What if agriculture on the island was encapsulated within a tall building? This solution would add new depth to experiencing ecological and climatic systems in an urban, living, and working environment.

Vertical agriculture within the tower serves several purposes. It creates a buffer zone to regulate seasonal changes in climate, provides access to more local sources of food, and enables residents and workers alike to enjoy beautiful spaces and landscape throughout the building. Farm “laboratories” occur within two ramped zones in the tower while a living machine promenade connects the building to the ground. Rainwater is collected by a rooftop scoop and is progressively filtered by the vegetation within the labs. This system is revealed in the farm labs to expose the process to residents and workers. It is also utilized by occupants as greywater. Blackwater is treated by the living machine and is reused for hydroponic crops.

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Now this is what we need more of! Let’s build more rooftop greenhouses in the city so that we can grow food all year long!

Talking large-scale farming from an entrepreneurial point of view, Lufa Farms in downtown Montreal is pretty interesting. On top of a two-story building the farm has built a 31,000-square-foot greenhouse. Over 40 different crops are being produced year round in the rather innovative greenhouses that can even stand the snow in the Canadian winters. For watering the plants the farm uses the irrigation system of the building. For some crops produces in this greenhouses, extra energy is needed. This energy is largely provided by the building too. This way Luna Farms really uses the advantages of the urban conditions, which makes it a real urban rooftop farm. Lufa Farms is currently looking to expand its activities to the United States and find a way to scale urban farming.

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The Vancouver based company Vertical Designs Ltd. has recently struck a deal with the bio-pharma company Abattis. The deal involves Vertical Designs selling their vertical farming technology so that Abattis can produce crops for the ingredients that they use in their bio-pharma products.

Why is this news? Well, up until now vertical farming has been directed at solving food consumption needs of urban centers and has largely been sold on the environmental benefits of growing indoors and vertically. The economic case for vertical farming remains questionable for many. Now that an industry other than food is investing in the vertical farming technology that Vertical Designs Ltd. offers, it opens new possibilities for investment into dense urban food production. In short, it is a sign that the economic viability of vertical farming is growing as its possible uses broadens. Check out this media release on the new partnership:

Abattis Bioceuticals Corp. (CNSX:FLU) is pleased to announce that further to its news release of October 18, 2012, the Company has now executed a formal License Agreement with Vertical Designs Ltd. pursuant to which Vertical Designs granted a Bio-Pharma license to the Company which permits Abattis to now grow and produce plants, plant materials and extracts in licensed facilities that it builds in British Columbia utilizing Vertical Design’s patented technology. In addition, Abattis may purchase equipment from Vertical Designs for use at such facilities. Abattis retains the sale and marketing rights attached to all products grown or produced by it at these licensed facilities.

Pursuant to the terms of this agreement, Abattis has issued 2,500,000 common shares to Vertical Designs at a deemed price of $0.10/share ($250,000) and will pay an additional $37,000 cash after completion of its next financing. As further consideration, Vertical Designs will be entitled to a 3% royalty on net sales received from the sale of all products grown or produced using Vertical Design’s licensed technologies.

Abattis will also spend an additional $213,000 over time, as finances permit, to purchase equipment from Vertical Designs for use at the facilities that it will be building using Vertical Design’s licensed technology.

With the execution of this License Agreement, the Company continues to deliver on its plan to become a fully integrated bioceutical company that offers cutting-edge proprietary products to the medicinal, nutraceutical and cosmetic industries.

“We are very pleased to be granted this license and to have a strategy to utilize it to bring maximum value to our shareholders. Laws have changed in the US and new markets are continually opening up. Pharma companies have patents expiring and the Abattis/Vertical Designs capabilities create solutions to these market needs,” stated Mike Withrow. “This is another milestone met for Abattis to become the world’s first fully integrated bioceutical company and it brings us another step closer to implementing our Grow, Dry, Extract, Refine and Sell (GDERS) model. Abattis will now control its own proprietary and patented products from seed to producing finished product at facilities owned by its wholly-owned subsidiary, Northern Vine Canada Inc. We believe this gives the Company a competitive edge in the markets we have identified. The Company can ensure control in the supply chain and traceability at a Drug and Pharma level for its ingredients and finished products.”

“Times and laws are changing and we believe there is massive need developing as plant-based products appear to be in huge demand globally. Execution of this agreement and the grant of this license to Abattis allows Vertical Designs to commence implementation of turn-key operations around the world, beginning in British Columbia, to mass produce and extract many targeted species and cultivars containing high value compounds for health and medicinal needs,” stated Nick Brusatore, President and chief executive officer of Vertical Designs. “With this agreement now cemented, we plan to target expansion of our turn-key operations throughout Canada and the USA.”

About Vertical Design

Vertical Design is helmed by Nick Brusatore — an innovative eco-entrepreneur, natural capitalist, mechanical designer and inventor. Mr. Brusatore has presented on the benefits of vertical farm production facilities and energy-saving technologies on the international stage, including in Vancouver, Haiti and New York, San Francisco, China and at various college universities. Vertical Design is headquartered in Vancouver, B.C.

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First North American Vertical Farm Opens in Vancouver!

Last month, the first commercial vertical farm in the world opened in Singapore. This week, Alterrous systems opened up its first vertical farm on top of a parkade in Vancouver. It feels like just yesterday that we were blogging about the initial stages of construction of the farm.

We couldn’t help but smile at the picture below of Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson enjoying his first taste of vertically farmed produce.

Vancouver is well on its way achieving its goal of being the greenest city by 2020.

Locavores, look no further than the 10^th floor of a downtown parkade for homegrown, leafy greens.

The first vertical urban farm in Vancouver – and in North America – harvested its first commercial crop of greens, kale, spinach, arugula and fresh herbs Tuesday from the rooftop of the Richard St. EasyPark.

The clean-tech farm is green, innovative, creates local jobs and occupies unused space, making it a “win-win” for Vancouver, Mayor Gregor Robertson said at the launch event.

Plus it lines the city’s pockets. Vancouver-based Alterrus Systems Inc. leased the underused parking space from the city at market rates and built the greenhouse with its own cash.

The $2-million, 6,000 square foot Local Garden, as the crops are branded, will employ between four to six people from Downtown Eastside organization Mission Possible.

The original VertiCrop system at the U.K.’s Paignton Zoo grows produce to feed animals, but this is Alterrus’ first attempt to sell to commercial markets.

It expects to produce 150,000 pounds of produce annually. The crops take about 20 days to grow and are rotated through the conveyor system to get maximum light exposure.

While the greens will be sold to those who can afford them, Alterrus is looking at opportunities to pay part of its lease fees in produce to contribute healthy food to city organizations, strategic advisor Donovan Wollard said.

Local restaurants and grocery stores such as Fable, Hawksworth, Spud.ca and Urban Fare want to buy the greens rather than ship the highly perishable items from as far as 2,000 kilometres away.

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