Office + Greenhouse Hybrid:  Vertical Farming Tailored to What Exists

STUDIO - "Cultivating Columbus", PROJECTS - Office Module & Future Farm City Exhibition

This urban design studio investigated ways in which Columbus, Ohio could be transformed through
urban-agricultural hybrids. The city was divided into five territories based on development strategy and density. Within the ‘Civic Center’ category, the designs addressed conditions of an aging and emptying downtown. The proposed hybrids critique the vertical farming standard due to its immense start-up cost and inflexibility to grow. The high-rise greenhouse was re-evaluated and re-envisioned as interventions of appropriate scale and increased financial feasibility in realization.

The rotating office greenhouse occupies the sun drenched real-estate of existing office high-rises. This area typically inaccessible for food production has been retrofitted with a rotating window-sized hydroponics system. It has been densified through its conversion to a rotating cylinder is available in two sizes. The amount of production desired on the office at a particular location in the building would express itself through the amount of modules present on the exterior. A vacant office unit could have all of its windows outfitted by a small entrepreneur, who would then maintain the modules.

Below are the orthographic views of how the modules would interact with the glass curtain wall and
structural bays of a typical office building. Also shown are diagrams explaining how dense the production of a rotating cylinder module is when compared to a standard hanging window farm.

The module design incorporates existing window farm technology, which is increasing in DIY popularity, and alters it into a official contained system that allows for interaction and manipulation at various capacities. The systems of how the module would function are shown at the bottom right. A sliding door allows access while rings of hanging plants rotate around a central structural and water distribution pipe.

The implementation of a module in an office would allow workers to get vegetables for lunch and could add to the pleasantness of an area for coffee breaks.