In the Developing World, the predominant trend is one of more and more people leaving rural areas and farmlands for the cities — not much different than what has happened in the the US and Europe over the past 50 years or so. It is estimated that 80% of the world’s population will live in or close to cities by 2050.*
Problem: urban environments produce a lot of stuff (including pollution and garbage), but the one thing they don’t produce very much of is food. Produced consumer by city-dwellers is still mostly grown in out-lying agricultural areas (sometime s quite distant) and then trucked over distances to these cities. In the process a good deal gasoline is consumed and CO2 emitted, making this practice anything but “green”.
Vertical farm concepts for the urban environment are not new, but now, a Swedish-American architectural design company (Plantagon) seems to have solved once of the biggest challenges of urban vertical farming: the need for uniform, sufficient natural light to provide even growth of vertically-farmed plants.
The solution is all in the design; the “plantagon” features a vertical, rotating “corkscrew” platform for the crops and is situated within a huge, curved-glass, geodesic spheroid structure. By offering the dual benefits of cost-cutting and elimination of transportation, these “plantagons” are envisioned to spearhead the green urban living movement of the future.
According to Plantagon, their urban greenhouse
“…will dramatically change the way we produce organic and functional food. It allows us to produce ecological [resources] with clean air and water inside urban environments, even major cities, cutting costs and environmental damage by eliminating transportation and deliver directly to consumers.”
The design and concept is not without its critics, however. Some feel that this represents a “resource heavy” design and that everything — including soil, fertilizer, air and water will have to be imported (or pumped in , in the case of water) from elsewhere to sustain the farm. The construction materials and their transport are further cited as non-sustainable aspects of this design. Further, critics assert that produce would have to be manually harvested, thus reducing the actual productivity of the farm.
Proposed designs for vertical farms
That said, the designers make no claim that the Plantagon is anything close to a fully functioning (contained) ecosystem (any more than a contemporary rural farm is). And, a non “green” construction process can produce a structure that is, more or less, “green” in many respects (more energy efficient, non-polluting, economically self-supporting, etc.). Clearly, architectural design is still transitioning towards full sustainability in its construction methods.
Perhaps someday soon a green construction model will be added to this greenhouse design, and will then merge with an autonomous ecosystem design (note: this author is already working on one such design). To paraphrase Steve Jobs: lots of folks confuse bad design with destiny.
The Company believes that the Plantagon® greenhouse design will make it “economically possible to finance each greenhouse from its own sales.” The company hopes to begin its first proof-of-concept building within 3 years.
*This is the trend in the Developing World (which is composed of over 5 billion persons); a modest, reverse trend (towards country, or more rural living) seems to be happening in some urban centers in the US and Europe (Note: by 2050, the world’s population will exceed 15 billion.)
Read more (and view more images) at the Inhabitat blog article: Plantagon: a Massive Geodesic Dome Farm for the Future by Ariel Schwartz
Top image: Courtesy of Plantagon (via Inhabitat.com)
Bottom photo (vertical farm designs): Chris Jacobs, Gordon Graff, SOA ARCHITECTES; Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
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