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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... View full entry
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
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... View full entry
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. — civileats.com
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... View full entry
When most Amish men were farmers, it was common for them to work seasonally with non-Amish in town, on more traditional things like cabinet making or carpentry, or even making cigar boxes, boats and band instruments. Nolt, who conducted interviews in the late ‘90s with Amish workers in the boat-making industry, said interviewees pointed to the fact that making the wooden boats was similar to wood working. — Atlas Obscura
According to Steve Nolt, Senior Scholar at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, most of the Amish men under 65 work in factories. The majority of these manufacturing plants either assemble RVS or supply parts such as cabinets or windows. Such increased... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— Near Future
"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... View full entry
So Smith invented the world’s first 3D ocean farm. Not only does his model aim to reduce overfishing, but it also attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change. [...]
With scalability in mind, Smith wanted his model to be simple and replicable. To that end, GreenWave supports other fish farmers to get create their own 3D ocean gardens.
“If you were to take a network of our farms totaling the size of Washington state, technically you could feed the world,” Smith said.
— marketplace.org
Learn more about Bren Smith's award-winning GreenWave farming system when Archinect first announced him winning the 2015 Fuller Challenge last month: GreenWave's 3D ocean farm initiative wins the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge View full entry
The non-profit group GreenWave, which won the prestigious 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, is gaining attention for designing reportedly the world's first 3D multi-species ocean farms. Much like the group's marine-oriented initiatives, the ocean farm project aims to restore ocean ecosystems and... View full entry
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... View full entry
The vertical-farming movement continues to grow with the recent unveiling of FARM-X's modular vertical-farming concept, which the Oakland, CA-based organization developed with Zurich-based Conceptual Devices founder Antonio Scarponi and an agronomy team led by University of Bologna Professor... View full entry
Next time you dig into a bowl of leafy greens, chances are they were grown in the heart of Newark, soon home to the world's largest indoor vertical farm*.AeroFarms, a leading commercial grower for vertical farming and controlled agriculture, together with property management firm RBH Group, a slew... View full entry
Architect Jose M. Ahedo of Studio Ahedo from Barcelona was named as the 2014 recipient of the Wheelwright Prize. The competition pool started with nearly 200 applications from 46 countries and then to seven finalists who were announced in April.
For its second year as an open international competition, the Harvard Graduate School of Design awards the $100,000 travel fellowship to an early-career architect whose proposal best conveys original, scholarly, and professional design.
— bustler.net
After a second stage of deliberation, the jury selected Ahedo and his proposal, "Domesticated Grounds: Design and Domesticity Within Animal Farming Systems", which focuses on the architectural and organizational models of animal farming."Noting that livestock is a significant cause of land... View full entry
In some of Detroit's most deserted and blighted neighborhoods, where residents see little more than hopeless despair, John Hantz spotted opportunity.
The wealthy businessman, founder of Hantz Group, decided to purchase and convert hundreds of acres of vacant city-owned plots into farmland.
It's taken five years, but this week Gov. Rick Snyder approved the sale of nearly 150 acres, 1,500 parcels, to Hantz Woodlands, a private business, for about $500,000.
— mlive.com
Singapore now has its first commercial vertical farm, which means more local options for vegetables.
The technique uses aluminium towers that are as tall as nine metres, and vegetables are grown in troughs at multiple levels.
The technique utilises space better -- an advantage for land-scarce Singapore.
— channelnewsasia.com
Dawn breaks. The hens descend from their bespoke Versailles-inspired Le Petit Trianon house to their playground below for a morning wing stretch. Slipping on your wellies, you start for the coop and are greeted by the pleasant clucking of your specially chosen flock and the site of the poshest hen house ever imagined. — neimanmarcus.com
Your custom-made multilevel dwelling features a nesting area, a "living room" for nighttime roosting, a broody room, a library filled with chicken and gardening books for visitors of the human kind, and, of course, an elegant chandelier. The environment suits them well as you notice the fresh... View full entry
