Archinect - News

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.”

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...

A new research lab by CLOU highlights the growing demand for agricultural tourism in southern China

2021-08-19T11:52:00-04:00

Images have been unveiled for a new multi-functional Chinese agriculture and exhibition center that will transform the Nanfan High Tech District in the tropical Hainan Island city of Sanya into a scientific research hub.

CLOU Architects is behind the 4,000-square-meter (43,055-square-foot) Sanya Farm Lab that will capitalize on the local government’s investment into horticulture and food science with an integrated four-story showcase of innovation.

Image courtesy Shining Laboratory

Highlighted by a graticular glass and timber truss facade, the Lab fluidly incorporates a raised outdoor plaza into the building’s first two floors that is meant to “blur traditional boundaries between nature and city,” as it simultaneously “narrows the distance between technology and life,” according to the architect.

Image courtesy Shining Laboratory

The 31-inch-deep roof grid structure will help reduce the building’s sunlight absorption by 70%. The firm was very particular about developing a plan that w...

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...

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.”

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"

BOARD suggests abandoning the idea of agriculture in cities

2012-01-16T11:42:00-05:00

BOARD's Europan 11 entry for the Dutch city of Deventer suggests abandoning the idea of agriculture in cities.

The Europan 11 entry of the Rotterdam based Bureau of Architecture, Research, and Design (BOARD) entitled "Cell Division", suggests giving the spatially magnificent cells in Deventer's famous silo over to apartments containing all the service and facility rooms, such as toilets, bathrooms, kitchens, and storage spaces, instead of creating fashionable urban micro-agriculture.