Archinect - News

Anti-democratic vistas: Plans for a new city in Northern Californian farmlands draw ire from concerned officials

2023-09-04T12:00:00-04:00

Over a five-year period, the company became the largest landowner in Solano County after purchasing more than 55,000 acres of undeveloped land. The company has paid more than $800 million since 2018, according to court records. [...] On the eastern end of Solano County, the city of Rio Vista is now surrounded by Flannery Associates land. Mayor Ronald Kott said that, like many Solano County officials, he had not been approached by anyone from the company to discuss plans for the land.

Similar to Marc Lore’s utopian vision for a new $400 billion Shenzhen-style city from scratch called Telosa, the secretive land grab-cum-startup city lies suspiciously close to Travis Air Force Base and is being marketed as a “new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space.”

Democratic Representative Mike Thompson told reporters last week he was “very concerned about our national security” related to the plan's proximity to the base. Some residents have reported “fear” in their dealing with the company, including concerns about retaliation. The company, meanwhile, maintains its secrecy is deliberate and intended to prevent possible real estate speculation on the part of landowners, a group of whom they have sued for collusion.

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...

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.”

IAAC students build advanced prototype greenhouse for food and energy production

2022-03-04T12:00:00-05:00

The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) has unveiled a prototype greenhouse which responds to urban food and energy needs. The Solar Greenhouse was designed and built by a team of students, professionals, and experts from the school’s Masters in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities program, and was constructed in a natural park on the outskirts of Barcelona.

Photo © Adria Goula

The greenhouse has been designed to be replicated in rural and urban areas, and potentially to populate the rooftops of urban buildings. Responding to the European Union’s zero-emission goals for 2050, the project seeks to return food and energy production to cities with a compact structure that uses solar energy, sustainable materials, and advanced urban farming technology.

Photo © Adria Goula

“The aim was to design and build a system that could be replicated in both rural and urban areas,” the team says. “Solar Greenhouse is the result of the investigation and search of new ways...

MVRDV unveils Armenian masterplan named after first human to orbit Earth

2022-01-12T10:27:00-05:00

MVRDV has unveiled its vision for a major masterplan in the Gagarin Valley in Armenia. The 34,000-hectare area is home to 11,000 people spread across several villages, with about one-third of the landscape consisting of patches of land owned by the local community. MVRDV’s masterplan seeks to make the area “more sustainable and ecological diverse” through the planting of 10,000 plant species, and 12,000 new housing units.

Farming infrastructure. Image: MVRDV

Under the plans, the existing mosaic of 10,000 existing plots will be preserved and reinforced, while the water systems will be enhanced through the addition of canals, public paths, and greenery along the network. Existing roads will continue to form a starting point for connecting the villages, with new walking and cycling infrastructure added.

Bird's eye view. Image: MVRDV

“The area is named after Yuri Gagarin, who was the first human to orbit the earth; he saw the planet’s vulnerability, a house in need of extra care, as many...

World’s first 'farmscraper' unveiled by Carlo Ratti Associati in Shenzhen

2021-08-26T12:43:00-04:00

Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) has unveiled a project dubbed “the world’s first farmscraper,” to be built in Shenzhen, China. The 218-meter-high, 51-story Jian Mu Tower will contain a large-scale farm system with the ability to produce crops to feed 40,000 people per year, as well as offices, a supermarket, and a food court.

CRA’s design was among the finalists for an international competition organized by leading Chinese supermarket chain Wumart, occupying the last available plot of land in Shenzhen’s Central Business District. The name of the Jian Mu Tower is derived from the mythical symbol of the “jian mu tree” which, in ancient Chinese folklore, connects heaven and earth. According to the tradition, heaven is depicted as round, while the earth is square; aspects which are echoed in the building’s form through a rectangular base gradually morphing into a tubular form as it rises.

Jian Mu Tower. Image via CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati

The scheme’s façade consists of a 10,000-square-m...

The grain elevators of the Canadian prairie are disappearing

2020-01-20T15:09:00-05:00

Grain elevators were once an icon of Canada’s west: often painted a bright boxcar red, they stood in towns across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. [...] In the 1930s there were nearly 6,000 towers; now fewer than a thousand remain. The destruction, in many ways, mirrors the broader decline of rural communities in western Canada.

For The Guardian, journalist Leyland Cecco on the struggle of small agricultural communities in Canada's prairie provinces to preserve their aging, wooden grain elevators as cultural heritage monuments.

Restored Alberta Wheat Pool elevators at the Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre in Nanton, Alberta. Photo: Tony Hisgett

Once the pride of every community and dubbed "prairie castles" for their often imposing heights in the flat landscape, thousands of them were left to rot and eventually faced demolition. Only a handful of lucky structures managed to win protection status, such as at the Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre in Nanton, Alberta or the Prairie Elevator Museum in Acadia, AB.

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...

Aleksandra Jaeschke announced as recipient of 2019 Wheelwright Prize

2019-05-10T09:30:00-04:00

This morning, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design announced Polish architect Aleksandra Jaeschke as the winner of the 2019 Wheelwright Prize. Established in 1935, the coveted $100,000 architectural grant supports travel-based research and investigative approaches to contemporary design.

A Harvard GSD graduate, Jaeschke was selected by a seven person jury for her proposal UNDER WRAPS: Architecture and Culture of Greenhouses a project born from her long-term fascination with horticultural operations and the resulting relationships between plants and humans. Prior work of hers has explored sustainability as a building-scale issue; and looked at how building regulations and new technologies shape environmentally-driven design.

Aleksandra Jaeschke

Currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design at The University of Texas at Austin, Jaeschke will spend the next two years traveling to countries like Taiwan, Morocco, and Israel, looking at regions with a ...

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...

Is vertical farming the future of agriculture?

2018-07-11T14:36:00-04:00

The astronomical capital costs associated with starting a large hydroponic farm (compared to field and greenhouse farming), its reliance on investor capital and yet-to-be-developed technology, and challenges around energy efficiency and environmental impact make vertical farming anything but a sure bet. And even if vertical farms do scale, there’s no clear sense of whether brand-loyal consumers, en masse, will make the switch from field-grown produce to foods grown indoors.

A look at the benefits and costs to vertical farming taking into account new technologies, the architecture and economics of production, and consumer demand. In these indoor spaces food is being grown hydroponically, meaning without soil and using artificial LED lighting. As new innovations emerge disrupting the agriculture industry, the impact of indoor farming remains open ended.

LED lighting used for an indoor farming operation. Image: Agritecture.

At the VDNKh park in Moscow, Workhaus design an educational "Urban Farm"

2017-01-25T17:29:00-05:00

Larger than the entirety of Monaco, the VDNKh is a trade show and amusement park in Moscow that houses, alongside other things, a slew of historical national pavilions and teaching spaces. Recently, an urban farm was added to the site, intended to serve as both a leisure space and an educational opportunity for children and adults. Designed by the Moscow-based studio Wowhaus, the project includes a completely new building and several pavilions set in a bucolic landscape.

The project, aptly titled “Urban Farm”, houses goats, donkeys, sheep, cows, rabbits, chickens, geese and ducks. An “orangery” is divided into three zones: one for hydroponic cultivation of herbs and vegetables, one for flowers in soil, and one for exotic plants in tubs. The spaces are designed so that they can also be used for public lectures.

Additionally, there’s a cooking school for children, a “woodland library”, a fishing area and picnic areas. The Urban Farm isn’t just about agriculture, though. The site will al...

Huge groundwater reserves discovered deep below California's Central Valley

2016-06-28T13:49:00-04:00

In a surprising new study, Stanford researchers have found that drought-ravaged California is sitting on top of a vast and previously unrecognized water resource, in the form of deep groundwater, residing at depths between 1,000 and nearly 10,000 feet below the surface of the state’s always thirsty Central Valley. [...] new research could prove controversial among scientists trying to interpret what it means for a state that has battled over water, and its distribution, going back many decades.

Other drought-related stories in the Archinect news:

Are "Food Computers" the key to a more sustainable future of agriculture?

2016-05-11T14:00:00-04:00

That an apple can travel over 11,500 miles from where it was grown (spending over a year in shipment and in toxic, low-oxygen storage to suspend its maturation) is the perfect object lesson of our global agricultural system’s failures. [...] And with the advent of natural-resource scarcity, flattening yields, loss of biodiversity, changing climates, environmental degradation, and booming urban populations, we’re hurtling toward its natural limit.

"What if we could build a different world? One in which anyone could farm anywhere, not just on land devastated by disaster, but in basements, skyscrapers, and abandoned subway tunnels? Or in classrooms, rooftops, and old factories?"

In this article by Caleb Harper, the Director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at MIT, he criticizes the "snarled cats-cradle of crisscrossed strings between origin and destination, shipment and storage" that constitutes today's global agricultural system.

At the Open AG Initiative, they're experimenting with hi-tech but low-impact ways to produce food, such as the “Food Computer,” a "controlled environment agriculture platform." The platform utilizes robotic control systems and plant-sensing mechanisms to produce a "precisely calibrated environment for growth."

By utilizing thirty sensing points per plant, the group believes they're creating more of a dialogue with biological systems than the dominating tendencies of conventional architecture.

The Open ...

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:

Egypt's urban growth threatens Nile farmland

2015-07-09T21:30:00-04:00

Most Egyptians have always lived in the fertile stretch along the Nile, the nation’s breadbasket which accounts for less than 10 per cent of Egypt’s territory. But urban growth has become the chief threat to agricultural land as farmers haphazardly – and illegally – build new houses to make room for the next generation. Construction surged even more amid a security vacuum that followed the 2011 popular uprising that ousted the country’s long-time autocrat, Hosni Mubarak.

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...

Enlisting the Internet of Things against California's historic drought

2015-07-02T20:58:00-04:00

[...] the drought is a gusher for a growing number of tech startups in the emerging world of the Internet of Things, the buzzy term for the trend of connecting devices and data in the physical realm to the Internet. Getting more sensors into the environment will help thousands of farms, businesses and cities figure out where water is going and how it can be diverted for the most efficient use. Agriculture is the area most ripe for collecting more and higher-quality data.

Old MacDonald had a farm (on a Toronto rooftop)

2015-06-10T14:53:00-04:00

Green roofs are nice, but rooftop farms are better. They’re the future of living architecture, say international green roof advocates who gathered in Toronto last week. [...] “We have a handful of agricultural green roofs and all of them are community projects,” like Eastdale Collegiate, Ryerson’s Engineering building and the Carrot Common, said Peck. “But we don’t have any commercial-scale agriculture on roofs — that’s the next thing.”

California Farmers Using Oil Wastewater during Drought

2015-04-08T13:12:00-04:00

For every barrel of oil Chevron produces in its Kern River oil field, another 10 barrels of salty wastewater come up with it. So Chevron is selling about 500,000 barrels of water per day...back to...the local water district that delivers water to farmers within a seven-mile slice of Kern County...But it’s a risky dance; over time, high sodium can change the properties of the soil, making it impermeable, unable to take in any more water...Eventually, the soil becomes barren.

Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to the Dry Futures competition!

OMA to master plan a "Food Hub" in Louisville

2015-04-03T14:00:00-04:00

[OMA's] design knits together a complex program of green industry and public engagement. A new master plan just released by Seed Capital shows a zigzagging complex that is expected to be under construction later this year. [...] Heine said Seed Capital, founded by Heine and Stephen Reily, selected OMA to design the Food Hub following a limited request for proposals that generated interest from five firms. [...] OMA is working with the Louisville office of GBBN Architecture on the project.

In case you aren't familiar with the concept of a "food hub", from Broken Sidewalk:

“A regional food hub is,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “a business or organization that actively manages the aggregation, storage, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale, retail, and institutional demand.” But Louisville’s $46 million food hub is expected to be much more than a distribution hub for local farmers, with plans for on-site farming, processing, recycling, education, and retail.

Apparently the Louisville food hub was one of the sites focused on by students in OMA's ongoing GSD studio, looking at the relationship between food, design and architecture. A couple of students had already focused research and design work on the site by the time OMA was selected.

Can urban agriculture work on a commercial scale?

2014-08-22T18:23:00-04:00

Eating food that’s grown locally and sustainably is a fantastic and increasingly popular idea, but it’s also expensive. Producers tend to drown under marketing and distribution costs, and struggle to find retail channels for their products. To assume that urban farms can escape that trap because of their extreme proximity to consumers would be a mistake; getting food to consumers has proven a logistical nightmare for them as well.

Rooftop farms combine the rural and urban in future cities

2014-05-20T13:43:00-04:00

As fossil fuels become more expensive and the number of urban dwellers continues to rise, urban farming will help feed the population without increasing the cost and pollution of food transport. [...] The rise in rooftop farming isn't limited to commercial operations. "Rooftop farming and gardening has become extremely diverse, and in that sense a more 'normal' presence in cities"

Forget Golf Courses: Subdivisions Draw Residents With Farms

2013-12-17T13:55:00-05:00

When you picture a housing development in the suburbs, you might imagine golf courses, swimming pools, rows of identical houses. But now, there's a new model springing up across the country that taps into the local food movement: Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity. It's called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA.

Rooftop Farms to Deal with Growing Food Crisis

2013-05-01T10:34:00-04:00

Some of the most densely populated cities across the globe are tackling population growth and food shortages by establishing more rooftop farms. Vertical farms are popping up on unused rooftops in cities across the globe and the outcome is extremely positive.

The Architecture of Wine

2012-08-07T14:10:00-04:00

[...] the architecture of wine is faced with a much greater challenge than meeting the very specific technical requirements of winemaking, it has to celebrate the process. Nowadays, wineries like religious buildings, are the must-visit destinations for tourists, where people go in droves on alcoholic pilgrimages.

Hottest new development trend: Broadacre City

2011-09-15T11:44:17-04:00

In a movement propelled by environmental concern, nostalgia for a simpler life and a dollop of marketing savvy, developers are increasingly laying out their cul-de-sacs around organic farms, cattle ranches, vineyards and other agricultural ventures.

via Planetizen