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SCAPE, ARO, and Colloqate design Brooklyn high school campus with a hydroponics greenhouse and outdoor teaching spaces

2023-05-05T14:40:00-04:00

A team comprising SCAPE, Architecture Research Office (ARO), and Colloqate has unveiled a vision for a high school campus in Brooklyn with anti-racism, climate action, sustainable food systems, environmental justice, and experimental learning at the heart of its curriculum. The Launch School at Floyd Bennet Field will be constructed on a former airfield along the shores of Jamaica Bay, and will see a series of connective outdoor hallways knitting together buildings and landscapes.

Image credit: SCAPE

The design of the 7-acre campus embodies a ‘learning by doing’ approach featuring a refurbished and modernized central building, an urban farm and outdoor classroom, and a harvest and sensory garden. The campus will also hold a greenhouse with hydroponics, a central community hall, and spaces for outdoor art, teaching, performance, and exploration.

Image credit: SCAPE

“Launch at Floyd Bennett Field is an unprecedented opportunity to build a world-class educational ecosystem for communitie...

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...

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
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A Vertical Harvest in Jackson, Wyoming

2016-05-01T23:57:00-04:00

“There’s a whole bunch of wonderful aspects of it,” Mr. Cheramy said, noting Vertical Harvest’s tall and narrow greenhouse design and its hiring of people with disabilities. “But it also makes good fiscal sense.”

Claire Martin profiles Vertical Harvest, an urban/vertical farm which will begin churning out a projected 100,000 pounds of fresh produce a year. The firm was started by Penny McBride and Nona Yehia (co-founder of the local architecture firm E/Ye Architects).

Learn more about Vertical Harvest

Tokyo begins farming produce beneath its subway lines

2015-08-13T13:04:00-04:00

Kakutani is the main farmer behind "Tokyo Salad," the Metro’s new farming enterprise, farming that takes place underneath the Tozai Line. [...] Tokyo Metro started hydroponic farming this past January. They’re currently selling the lettuce varieties to a local Italian restaurant and The Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel. Over the next couple years, they’re hoping to expand. Maybe they’ll start selling to grocery stores, and maybe Kakutani says, "we’ll make salads or smoothies.”

More innovations from Japan: