Two Scandinavian companies will recycle data center heat for food production

2024-11-22T15:32:00-05:00

A new project aimed at developing a circular economy in Scandinavia will build two large commercial greenhouses that run on waste heat taken from nearby data centers. The projects will be located in Varde, Denmark, and Östersund, Sweden. The project will increase domestic food production. The agreement between WA3RM and the Vinga Group is worth $908 million. It could also set a valuable precedent.

As Dutch academic Marina Otero noted after her win of the 2022 Wheelwright Prize: "The huge scale of the operations of the data industry and its pervasiveness and increasing importance in the contemporary world — coupled with its openness to innovation and concurrent pressures to find better socio-ecological models — creates a fertile environment for experimentation and action."

The new face of dystopian architecture is… China’s massive high-rise pig farm

2023-02-12T08:00:00-05:00

Inside the edifice, which resembles the monolithic housing blocks seen across China and stands as tall as the London tower that houses Big Ben, the pigs are monitored on high-definition cameras by uniformed technicians in a NASA-like command center. Each floor operates like a self-contained farm for the different stages of a young pig’s life: an area for pregnant pigs, a room for farrowing piglets, spots for nursing and space for fattening the hogs.

A 26-story structure is, of course, the world’s tallest free-standing pig farm, according to the Times. It will be joined by a twin hog-raising center in October. The draconian forms are evocative of the measures required by China’s status as the world’s largest consumer of pork products and gaps in food production that must be hastily accounted for through such construction. (Not to instantiate that Western methods of agricultural production can't be equally heinous and unsavory by their own merits.)

As Orwell wrote, pigs are the cleverest of animals.

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Two Scandinavian companies will recycle data center heat for food production

The new face of dystopian architecture is… China’s massive high-rise pig farm