the first, ever, Farm-Scraper
source: DEZEEN (edited and shortened)
Carlo Ratti Associati has unveiled plans to build a 218-metre-tall skyscraper in China that would grow crops using aeroponics, as well as contain spaces for selling and consuming the produce.
The Jian Mu Tower would occupy the last available plot in Shenzhen's business district, completing the city's central skyline. The 51-storey building dedicates 10,000 square metres to the cultivation of crops, creating a vertical hydroponic farm.
The building is estimated to produce 270 tonnes of food per year, which is said to feed roughly 40,000 people. It would create a self-sustained food supply chain that manages cultivation, harvest, sale and consumption all within one building.
"The vertical aeroponic farm embraces the notion of zero food miles in the most comprehensive sense," Carlo Ratti told Dezeen. "Crops cultivated in the tower are sold and even eaten in the same location, which helps us conserve a great deal of energy in food distribution."
Aeroponic farm spaces and crops would be managed by an "AI-supported virtual agronomist" that oversees daily operations including irrigation, and environmental and nutritional conditions.
"We worked alongside ZERO, which specializes in innovative agricultural solutions," said Ratti. "The ultimate solution we developed is an efficient one from a management perspective and it adapts traditional robotic hydroponic farms to a vertical facade."
source: Bloomberg (edited and shortened)
In Shenzhen, Ratti says his proposal would take vertical farming “to the next level.” The proposed Jian Mu Tower would not only build taller, establishing what he says would be the world’s first farmscraper. It would also be a model for “how to integrate the natural world into building design,” by incorporating farming around the entire shell of a skyscraper where people are also working, shopping and eating. The greenery would sit in what’s known as a double-skin facade, with windows on both sides to allow natural sunlight to reach both the plants and the building interior. Ratti says this design - and the copious amounts of sunlight in Shenzhen - will enable the farm to be less reliant on artificial light and heating, which come with high energy use. But the farm is also intended to have benefits for the built environment: The heat that reflects off tall buildings can make a city hotter. Encasing a skyscraper with a farm is a good way to not just mitigate this effect and keep the building cooler without air conditioning, Ratti says, but also to produce food to feed the people in that building.
“Our point was, why don’t we try to harvest this energy from the sun on the facade of the skyscraper and turn it into a giant farm,” he said. “This would not have been possible a few years ago, but it’s possible today, thanks to advances in aeroponics and also robotics.”