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.

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.

“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 of adapting to modern life and withstanding future food and energy crises, reinterpreting the way we meet our most basic social needs in a more ecological way.”

The greenhouse follows a “zero-kilometer” philosophy, where the water, planting material, and building materials were all gathered from the local surroundings. The structure was built from pine timber, which was sustainably extracted, collected, and processed in the local area, while the glass roof was arranged in a diamond shape to allow for higher sunlight capture.

Internally, the greenhouse is comprised of two floors, with germination on the ground floor, and cultivation on the upper floor. The need for agricultural soil is eliminated due to the installation of an advanced hydroponic system, with the substrate instead containing raw sawdust collected from IAAC laboratories. The plant growth is also supported by a system of storage tanks and nutrient inlets, which feed nutrients to the plants through pipes, as well as a matrix of LED strip lights to further accelerate growth.

The project is one of a number of innovative approaches to urban farming unveiled in recent times. Last year, Carlo Ratti Associati unveiled plans for the world’s first “farmscraper” in Shenzhen, with the ability to produce enough crops to feed 40,000 people per year. 2021 also saw a new urban farm installed on the roof of the Javits Center, part of a $1.5 billion reinvestment into the venue. Green vegetated roofs also form a central part of MVRDV’s recently-unveiled master plan in Armenia, named after the first human to orbit Earth.