Archinect - News

CAW Architects completes Oakland urban farm project to deliver 30,000 school meals

2024-02-16T12:05:00-05:00

Palo Alto-based CAW Architects has completed a food-orientated educational project in Oakland, California. Named 'The Center,' the scheme comprises a central kitchen, culinary arts education center, and an urban farm, all designed to provide 30,000 fresh-cooked meals each day to 77 schools across Oakland.

Image credit: Bruce Damonte Photography

The project is anchored by a large outdoor court, shaded under an expansive wood trellis. Designed as a central hub to connect the kitchen, classrooms, and instructional garden, the courtyard is accessed from the classrooms by large glass roll-up doors, creating a natural circulation flow from the classrooms to the courtyard to the gardens and greenhouse.

Image credit: Bruce Damonte Photography

The classrooms include a full-service demonstration and teaching kitchen, in addition to a student education space, with intended users spanning early childhood to young adults...

Art performance at Tadao Ando's concrete MPavilion features grayscale gelato

2024-01-26T17:26:00-05:00

An exciting and tasty art performance has taken shape at the Tadao Ando-designed MPavilion in Melbourne, Australia.

It comes in the form of grayscale gelato, created by Brazilian artist João Loureiro in collaboration with local creamery Piccolina Gelateria. The treat is available in six different flavors, each a different shade of gray ranging from light gray to nearly black. No flavors are labeled, stimulating a unique and surprising sensory experience with pavilion visitors during the Australian summer months.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Piccolina Gelateria (@piccolinagelateria)

The gelato colors mirror the pavilion’s aesthetic, which comprises enclosed concrete perimeter walls and an aluminum-clad, single-column main structure and roof.

Related: Tadao Ando's MPavilion opens in Melbourne. Image: Beatrice Eckermann

As stated by MPavilion, "...this work questions our sense of comfort and forces us to rethink associations that have been rooted in u...

Placing a ‘culinary emporium’ inside an old Toronto postal station

2023-07-27T11:28:00-04:00

Giannone Petricone Associates has completed Stock T.C, a “culinary emporium” designed to offer a selection of high-quality ingredients, ready-to-eat foods, and an inviting dining experience.

Situated in a historical postal station in Toronto, Canada, the space includes an open market at the ground level, a 200-seat bistro on the second floor, and an event space with a circular bar and roof terrace on the third floor.

Photo credit: Doublespace

The restoration and repurposing of the 1936 limestone postal station included lining the perimeter walls with a second skin, from which shelves, lighting, and acoustic dampeners are hung, integrating the original structure with modern installations.

Photo credit: Stephanie Palmer

The space is infused with what the team calls “the omnipresence of food preparation, with a clear ‘backstage’ treatment” which “mixes with the building materials to entertain the senses.” Reflecting the venue’s mix ...

Royal College of Art launches CLIMAVORE x Jameel partnership with Cooking Sections for unique sustainability research

2023-04-04T17:12:00-04:00

A new three-year partnership between the Royal College of Art (RCA), nonprofit Community Jameel, and the London-based former Turner Prize nominees Cooking Sections has been announced by the institution in the hopes of using architecture as a tool to advance our knowledge of agriculture-related sustainability practices in the built environment.

The school’s new CLIMAVORE x Jameel partnership will focus on two projects which “reimagine how we eat as human activity changes the climate by developing new methodologies and enhancing policies around the globe.”

The initiative is being led by Cooking Sections co-founders Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual. The RCA says they will look to leverage “architectural and artistic investigative tools, education and action to advance ecological networks beyond current understandings of sustainability, and produce new knowledge around food and climate justice.”

Both projects will offer research fellowship opportunities to postgraduate students...

IKEA unveils new plant-based food court concept

2022-12-22T16:41:00-05:00

Ingka Centres, a subsidiary of the Ingka Group (IKEA parent company), has announced its reinvention of the food court concept with Saluhall, a sustainable dining center inspired by Nordic food principles.

Saluhall is named after the Scandinavian-style “Market Hall.” It will serve food that is 80 percent plant-based, with the aim to increase to 100 percent plant-based in the future. It also has the goal of sending zero waste to landfills and having zero single-plastic usage. With 45 "Meeting Places" concepts operated by Ingka Centres globally, Saluhall will be their first food space to be entirely beef-free.

Image render courtesy of Ingka Centres.

“We are excited to be unveiling Saluhall, our bold and fresh Nordic take on the food hall concept,” said Ingka Centres’ Commercial and Digital Director, Jens Nielsen. “Our food offering has long been a key element of our meeting places, and with Saluhall we will go beyond dining to inspire the many pe...

Gingerbread City returns to the Museum of Architecture in London

2022-12-16T12:19:00-05:00

The popular Gingerbread City holiday exhibition has returned to London’s Museum of Architecture featuring some tasty designs from top firms organized into five “mini-cities” master-planned for the second consecutive year by Madeleine Kessler Architecture.

Each of the small cities represents global polar, temperate, continental, desert, and tropical climate zones. The museum’s founder Melissa Woolford told AJ in a preview of this year’s show that put forward “‘many brilliant ideas for how to tackle the challenge of building for different climates,” adding: “By bringing all these ideas together, Museum of Architecture hopes to inspire meaningful conversations around how we can act to help save our planet.”

The exhibition runs until January 2nd in the museum’s 6-7 Motcomb Street space in Belgravia. Let’s have a look at the competing teams with a selection of enticing photos. (h/t to AJ for the project descriptions.)

Desert Island. Image: © Luke O'Donovan

Liquorice Library (UHA) — "in th...

Three triangle-shaped buildings 'transformed' into tortilla chips as part of new Doritos marketing campaign

2022-08-29T13:29:00-04:00

Apparently, Doritos are everywhere. What you thought was Bjarke Ingels Group’s VIA 57 West is actually a cheesy tortilla chip.

Through a new marketing campaign by Frito-Lay North America titled Triangle Tracker, people can currently utilize Snapchat’s augmented reality software to seek, scan, and convert triangular shapes anywhere, including buildings, into Doritos for the chance to win money and other prizes. The company launched the program by illuminating three triangular-shaped structures in bright orange. Along with the aforementioned BIG building in Manhattan, the upside-down triangle shape at the top of Atlanta’s 101 Marietta Street skyscraper and the Memphis Pyramid were converted into gargantuan chips.

To participate, users need to point their Snapchat AR lens at any triangle in their environment or use TikTok to engage in weekly challenges.

Get ready for a big boom in vertical farming schemes

2022-04-07T17:24:00-04:00

At a time when supply chain disruptions continue to slow distribution, consumers embrace healthy eating habits and climate change is expected to affect crop yields, a practice known as controlled-environment agriculture, including indoor vertical farms relying on artificial light and technology, is attracting venture capitalists. What made moving indoors possible was a drop in price in LED lights, which plunged as much as 94 percent in 2015 from 2008.

The increasingly popular subsegment of the agriculture industry is expected to grow into a $9.7 billion market share by 2026 propelled by expanding urban populations and a decrease in arable land associated with traditional farming, which is on track to be cut in half by midcentury. Start-ups like FARM-X and AeroFarms have been able to expand their portfolio of warehouses thanks to an influx of seed capital but may still face limitations stemming from high energy costs required to maintain high-tech sensors and lighting systems based on LED technology that has recently stalled out in terms of its theoretical maximum efficiency.

“LED’s are not going to go down much more,” an adviser to the Tennessee Department of Energy explained to the Times. “Where investors are going against physics, they are going to have a hard time.”

Gingerbread City is back at London's Museum of Architecture just in time for the holiday rush

2021-12-14T15:17:00-05:00

A homespun holiday tradition has returned to London’s Museum of Architecture for the fifth consecutive year with a tasty new selection of sweet entries from some of the industry’s biggest names.

Gingerbread, likely the low-carbon concrete of food building materials, is the focus of the museum’s annual Gingerbread City exhibition on view until the second week of January.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Gingerbread City (@thegingerbreadcity)

The exhibition is master-planned by Madeleine Kessler, the architect in charge of curating the British pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, and is currently open to the public at the MoA’s pop-up space on Motcomb Street in Belgravia.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Gingerbread City (@thegingerbreadcity)

According to the museum: “This year's exhibition explores the theme ‘nature in the city,’ asking architects, engineers, and designers to use their design expertise (and ba...

Tate Modern unveils a visual feast for the Great British Bake Off

2021-11-24T19:19:00-05:00

The Tate apparently showed off a gingerbread model for the finale of the Great British Bake Off. This year’s winning entry for the BBC Channel 4 competition was an oversized remake of the Mad Hatter’s tea party from one-time architecture critic Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

The edible museum model was produced by food artists Caitlin Levin and Henry Hargreaves. The duo originally prepared several models of different museums like the MAXXI and Guggenheim for the 2013 edition of Miami Art Basel they said are inspired by each building’s unique form.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tate (@tate)

“We wanted to really focus on architecturally heavy galleries. Ones that were a mixture of the iconic and ones that people might not know, because a lot of it’s about learning and playing," Hargreaves said at the time. "Once we figured which galleries we wanted to do, we focused on certain angles and great shots and then we’d make a foamcore model of the gal...

Archaeologists uncover ancient snack bar in Pompeii

2020-12-29T14:46:00-05:00

Researchers said on Saturday they had discovered a frescoed thermopolium or fast-food counter in an exceptional state of preservation in Pompeii. The ornate snack bar, decorated with polychrome patterns and frozen by volcanic ash, was partially exhumed last year but archaeologists extended work on the site to reveal it in its full glory.

The astonishingly well preserved and nearly 2,000-year-old snack bar, or Thermopolium, in Pompeii's Regio V has re-emerged in its entirety, along with food residues, animal bones, and victims of the AD 79 volcanic eruption, following a lengthy excavation effort.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pompeii (@pompeii_parco_archeologico)

"The decorations on the counter — which were the first to emerge during the excavation — comprise the image of a Nereid riding a sea-horse in a marine setting on the front, while the shorter side features an illustration which is probably of the shop itself, like a kind of trademark," reports the Archaeological Park of Pompeii's website. "It was not by chance that the discovery during the excavation of amphorae, located in front of the counter, reflected the painted image."

Savvy entrepreneurs grow fresh vegetables deep beneath London city streets

2019-09-16T14:52:00-04:00

Deep beneath the streets of Clapham, London, in a former air raid shelter, Steve Dring and his colleagues are farming. Vertical farming, that is. The company Dring co-founded, Growing Underground, is cultivating a wide range of vegetables and herbs in vertically-stacked trays in the confined space. It’s part of a growing trend in Europe and the U.S.

Marketplace visits Growing Underground, a cutting-edge vertical farm inside a converted WWII-era air raid bunker 100 feet beneath London.

"If we were growing peas out in the open, we’d have three crops a year," the company's cofounder Steve Dring tells the reporter. "Here, we get 62 crops a year because we’re precisely giving the plants exactly what they want, all year round."

View this post on Instagram Great to have @bbcbreakfast filming LIVE on the farm yesterday! Go to @bbcbreakfast for full film!! . Repost @bbcbreakfast This farm makes salad ingredients 33m under Clapham . . #growingunderground #undergroundfarm #sustainablefood #sustainability #agritech #bbcnews #sustainableliving #sustainablefarm #healthyfood #microherbs #eventbrite #microgreens #healthysalad #nutrition #foodwaste #foodies #growingundergroundtour #plantpower #health #undergroundlondon #verticalfarming #futurefood #futurecities #agritech #urbanfarming #agriculture #urbanagriculture
A post sha...

MVRDV breaks ground on terrace-roof produce market in Tainan

2019-03-05T15:56:00-05:00

In one of their latest developments in Taiwan, MVRDV announced the groundbreaking of their upcoming Tainan Xinhua Fruit and Vegetable Market. Designed with LLJ Architects, the open-air wholesale produce market transforms an often-overlooked part of the food industry into a public experience where visitors can meet up, enjoy the products, and take in views of the surrounding rolling landscape.

Image © MVRDV.

Interior. Image © MVRDV.

Located in East Tainan, the market will be a simple 4-story structure topped by an undulating green roof whose terraces will each grow a different crop like pineapples, rice, tea, roses, and more. The accessible roof will also provide sheltered spots, benches, and picnic tables for visitors. As a mixed-use structure, the building will also contain the market's administrative offices, a restaurant, and an exhibition center where the region's agricultural products can be displayed.

Garden. Image © MVRDV.

“[Tainan Market] is completely functional and caters to...

Peek inside All Square's new grilled cheese restaurant in Minneapolis, designed by Syracuse-based Architecture Office

2018-09-21T20:34:00-04:00

Since Archinect spoke with All Square founder Emily Hunt Turner in 2017, the nonprofit civil rights social enterprise now has its first brick-and-mortar gourmet grilled cheese restaurant that opened in Minneapolis earlier this month.

Located along Minnehaha Mile, All Square's mission — which aims to prevent recidivism and employ and empower formerly incarcerated individuals — now has a physical presence. The project symbolizes “the importance of a clean slate and community support while sending a message that those who have paid their debts to society are ‘all square’ with society and should be afforded the right to live, unhindered, into their future,” Turner told Archinect in 2016.

Photo: Caylon Hackwith.

Jonathan Louie and Nicole McIntosh of Syracuse-based Architecture Office were in charge of converting a 900 square-foot space into a welcoming, community-oriented casual dining spot. The resulting project features a simple interior of white and gray tones ...

Guerrilla Grafting: fruit activists turn city trees into (free) food sources

2018-06-18T15:28:00-04:00

After pothole gardeners and pavement crack fillers, the Guerilla Grafters are the next urban hacking collective that wants to make streets a better places for everyone. The collective sees grafting branches of fruit trees onto trees in the streets as an opportunity to provide free access to food to urbanites. The process of adding a small branch to an existing city tree is considered vandalism. However, that doesn’t stop the Guerilla Grafters [...].

"The Guerrilla Grafters are not welcomed by everyone," writes Doris Tielemans for Pop-Up City about this branch (no pun intended) of Fruit Activism. "Most trees in cities don’t grow fruit for a reason."

Love Brutalism so much, you wanna eat it? Now you can.

2018-02-28T14:42:00-05:00

Some treats should really go into an art gallery instead of your mouth. Like these Brutalist-inspired delights by Danish designer and goldsmith Kia Utzon-Frank, which look like they've been chipped from the side of a concrete skyscraper.

If cold concrete surfaces AND sweet treats happen to be your kinda thang, then this is for you: London-based Danish designer/goldsmith Kia Utzon-Frank has developed her native country's flødeboller desserts in a béton brut look and now also offers masterclasses on how to make them, commissioned by the Barbican.

Kia Utzon-Frank's flødebollers in front of the Barbican's iconic hand-chiseled concrete facade. Photo: Louise Samuelsen

More of a marble/granite person? Utzon-Frank has got you covered as well.

Photo: Lea Anouchinsky

Check out her Instagram for more of the goodness and also learn about other designers and architects that have turned pastry chefs here.

Gingerbread City: Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster + Partners and others reveal their sweetest designs

2017-12-19T17:30:00-05:00

Some of the world's biggest architecture firms have been competing for plots in this winter's tastiest property market -- the Gingerbread City. Recently opened at the Museum of Architecture in London, the miniature metropolis is brimming with contemporary -- and almost entirely edible -- buildings. Around 50 companies specializing in architecture, engineering and landscaping have baked and built structures for the project.

Photo: Luke Hayes.

If you're in London this week, make sure to get into the holiday spirit the architectural way and stop by the Museum of Architecture's Gingerbread City before it closes this Friday — and nothing but cookie crumbs will remain.

Competing gingerbread bridges (gingerbreadges?) by Periscope, Hopkins, and reForm Architects. Photo: Luke Hayes.

The roster of around 50 participating architecture, engineering, and landscaping firms includes some recognizable names like Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster + Partners, NBBJ, Studio Egret West, Pitman Tozer, among others.

An edible "mixed-used" building by Cooke Fawcett Architects. Photo: Luke Hayes.

All images courtesy of the Museum of Architecture.

Feast your eyes on Pink Intruder's colorful, food-inspired mural in Valencia, Spain

2017-10-26T16:10:00-04:00

David Moreno and Miguel Arraiz of urban intervention art group Pink Intruder created a fruitful splash of color with the MUPFPP Mural in their hometown Valencia in Spain. Inspired by the fruits and vegetables in the city's orchards, Pink Intruder designed the welcoming (and obviously Instagram-friendly) mural at the Valencia Congress Center for the 2017 Annual Gathering and the Mayors’ Summit of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP).

Photo: Noel Arraiz.

Check out more of Pink Intruder's fun installations, like Renaixement at Burning Man 2016 and Ekklesia for Spain's 2015 Fallas Festival.

Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects open Easton, a New Home for Local Food and Social Culture in Helsinki

2017-10-26T13:45:00-04:00

Easton Helsinki, a shopping centre by Lahdelma & Mahlamäki in Itäkeskus, Helsinki, opened its doors to the public today. The 66,000m2 development is the first phase in a larger urban plan and looks to celebrate the identity and culture of Helsinki’s eastern districts. The project idealistically and physically centres itself around food, bringing together local vendors and businesses at the heart of the shopping centre; at the same time introducing in a much more varied commercial programme around this. Whilst become a beacon to those on the motorway, the shopping centre takes a much more calm approach when viewed from the street, with its gently undulating façade of ceramic tiles taking on the local red-brick aesthetic and sitting comfortably within the urban scale.

Easton offers 30,000 m2 of commercial floor space which is set to bring 40 businesses into the area, with the emphasis being put on healthy foods and creating an everyday social atmosphere around this. The more varied co...

Carlo Ratti Associati designs a delicious building made of chocolate

2017-10-18T20:09:00-04:00

Attention chocolate lovers, Italian designer Carlo Ratti has conceived an edible pavilion made of pralines.

Image by Daniele Iodice

Made for the high-end chocolate manufacturer Venchi, the building will be presented at Fico Eataly, the world largest food park in Bologna, Italy. The structure is composed of 30 thousand pralines of different sizes and shapes, all individually wrapped in a variety of colors of shiny paper. The dream doesn't end here, visitors are invited to pick and taste the pralines, slowly eating the building away…

Sam Fox students design a First Class Meal

2017-01-11T17:27:00-05:00

“First Class Meal does what the best sharing opportunities do — it identifies excess capacity from one person or organization and makes it available to another one in need, creating a symbiotic relationship that improves the success and efficiency of both partners,” said Linda C. Samuels, associate professor of urban design, who served as faculty advisor. “That symbiosis results in more profitable organizations and, ideally, a more equitable distribution of resources.”

The first phase of renovations would prioritize storage and pickup areas as well as space for classes.

Urban SOS is sponsored by multinational engineering company AECOM and the Van Alen Institute in partnership with 100 Resilient Cities. Other finalists — working to solve challenges in Athens as well as Durban, South Africa and Quito, Ecuador — include: Monash University, Harvard, California at Berkeley, Oxford, Columbia, The New School and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

For more information, visit aecom.com or follo...

LA's Donut Time, the LGBTQ landmark in “Tangerine”, is now permanently closed

2016-06-29T18:29:00-04:00

Anyone who's seen the iPhone-shot feature Tangerine or cruised by the doughnut shop at night knows that Donut Time wasn't just another of Los Angeles' dozens of purveyors of sweet, glazed pastries. Much more significant than that, it had long served as a haven for sex workers — many of them transgender women — who make a living on the streets nearby. "I didn't think it would ever go away. It's really sad," [Tangerine director Sean] Baker says. "I think the film caught an end to an era."

According to LAist, Donut Time's closure may be related to a massive mixed-use development proposed for that stretch along Santa Monica Boulevard, where (of course) gentrification is on the rise. It's not yet known if anything will replace Donut Time.

Tiny parking lots = big cost savings?

2016-03-23T17:43:00-04:00

Everyone loves the free samples, kitschy items, and affordable price points of SoCal grocer Trader Joe’s. The one thing that does spark ire about the chain is the small parking lots, which produce equal amounts of anxiety and horn abuse. But the website Strong Towns points out that TJ’s small footprints trickle down to cheaper prices for consumers.

If you're not within walking distance of a TJ's (or, if you're just lazy) parking in one of the lots requires the steady nerves of a Zen master and the spatial dexterity of an architect. Whatever method you use to get there, just don't forget your bag, or all of your kitschy sustainability cred will be erased.

Did you know: grocery stores aren't just great backdrops for Jane's Addiction videos (pictured above). For the best in grocery store design discussion:

Unfolding dumpling design with Architecture Research Office

2016-02-05T15:09:00-05:00

'The dumpling maker has a structural problem,' says Jason Kim, a project manager at ARO. 'The skin has to be thin enough where you have the right ratio of meat to skin, but strong enough to hold together.'

"How do the principles of architecture and design apply to dumplings?" Sporkful has a quick chat with dumpling fanatics Architecture Research Office about how particular design concepts can structurally improve the Lunar New Year food staple. Maybe you'll learn a trick or two on how to eat the seemingly gravity-defying soup dumpling, too.

If you don't want to listen to the whole episode — although you should still give it a listen because, hello, dumplings — ARO's interview starts around 13:25.

More about food and architecture on Archinect:

Need another last-minute holiday idea? Build your own Gingerbread Village with these architectural drawings

2015-12-23T14:57:00-05:00

If last-minute is your signature style for the holiday season, here's a crafty idea from a fellow designer that you can use to impress your guests or as a fun family-friendly activity. Robert Christo is a Brooklyn-based architect who enjoys building gingerbread houses with his family during this time of year. He decided to take the well-loved pastime a step further and draw some IKEA-like architectural drawings for a Gingerbread Village. With some frosting, a good amount of gingerbread, and whatever sweet edibles you need, use Christo's handy instructions as a guide to assemble your own festive town, including homes, shops, village green, a schoolhouse, and sledding hill. (Hopefully you won't need an Allen wrench in the process.)

Update: Robert Christo shared a few more drawings he sketched.

To zoom in on the drawings, click here.

If you still have some gift shopping to do, check out Archinect's holiday gift guides:

The 2015 holiday gift-giving guide for architects

Archinect's 2015 holid...

A global shift towards a vegan diet is necessary to stave off the worst of climate change, says new UN report

2015-11-25T23:12:00-05:00

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today. As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

"Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: 'Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels.'"

Related coverage:

Fuller Challenge winner says his GreenWave 3D ocean farm concept "could feed the world"

2015-11-20T13:15:00-05:00

So Smith invented the world’s first 3D ocean farm. Not only does his model aim to reduce overfishing, but it also attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change. [...] With scalability in mind, Smith wanted his model to be simple and replicable. To that end, GreenWave supports other fish farmers to get create their own 3D ocean gardens. “If you were to take a network of our farms totaling the size of Washington state, technically you could feed the world,” Smith said.

Learn more about Bren Smith's award-winning GreenWave farming system when Archinect first announced him winning the 2015 Fuller Challenge last month: GreenWave's 3D ocean farm initiative wins the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Carry out: world's first Taco Bell is being rescued from demolition

2015-11-19T17:47:00-05:00

When executives at Taco Bell found out that the Downey building that housed their first restaurant was at risk of being demolished, they ordered the store “to go.” The birthplace of the Mexican fast food chain, located on Firestone Boulevard, is up on rails and ready to roll. Founder Glen Bell built the mission style building in 1962 and on Thursday night at 10:30, store “Numero Uno” will begin the 45-mile ride to company headquarters in Irvine.

The original Taco Bell was initially threatened with demolition back in January. For all the best coverage of food-related design, do check out:

• Upstarts: Design, Bitches

• A Journey from Architecture and Design to Gourmet Dog Food

• How architects are redesigning schools that encourage kids to eat healthier

How architects are redesigning schools that encourage kids to eat healthier

2015-08-20T18:38:00-04:00

"The design of a school itself might matter as much as something like a gym class. 'The environments in which we live affect not just our behaviors, but our lifelong attitudes about things like healthy eating and active lifestyles...It's also clear that it's so much better to help prevent children from becoming obese than to try to help adults lose weight.'

Newark's 69,000 sq ft indoor vertical farm to break ground today

2015-07-09T09:34:00-04:00

What will reportedly be the world's largest indoor vertical farm will break ground on July 9 along 212 Rome Street in Newark, New Jersey. Earlier this year, leading vertical farm commercial grower AeroFarms, the property management firm RBH Group, and their affiliates jointly announced the conversion of a former steel factory into a spankin' new 69,000 square-foot indoor vertical farm. The first phases of the project are scheduled to open later this year.

Located on a three-acre site in the heart of Newark's Ironbound district, the $30 million project will also include AeroFarms' global corporate headquarters. AeroFarms partnered with Ironbound Community Corporation to create a recruiting and job training program to boost job opportunities for the local community, which is dealing with an unemployment rate that is twice the national average.

The new vertical farm is said to be capable of growing up to 2 million pounds of baby leafy greens and herbs in a controlled and sanitary facili...