SkyScrapers are energy dogs from a lot of perspectives most notably the energy needed to hoist people into the sky…so this concept probably won’t work. But from a local food perspective and from a built environment perspective It has some attraction.
On a personal note, I normally have little conscience about posting stuff here from other sources but this is from a blog, the person clearly put a lot of work into it and the pictures are really beautiful. So I am going to post a little of it here…for the rest goto:
http://www.land-force.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/17/vertical-farms/
20 Vertical Farming Pics, Designs & Concepts
One couldn’t say that the concept of vertical farming isn’t controversial, but they could say that it has serious merits that need to be considered on both sides of the issues.
What is a vertical farm? The basic premise, as you see in this image, is to be able to grow food in urban areas by creating tall buildings where, instead of each floor having offices, each floor is in essence its own super greenhouse, where different crops can be grown to feed people within its own community. The idea is to not only be able to feed the community, but to protect the land that’s being damaged by over-farming and making sure that there will still be enough food for an ever growing population.
Of course, not all designs would be the same, but this model of a design for the city of Seattle helps us to see how it would work. It’s integrated into a city plan so that it fits in, and has areas where people can go inside to not only tend to the plants, but could actually buy their produce at the same time.
Thinking of vertical farm in terms of super stores fits a model like this one, where the ground floor has everything a traditional supermarket would have,
While upper levels would contain areas for growing produce. This particular example tries to highlight how power might be created for all the energy needed to grow crops in urban areas, as the designs for vertical farming wouldn’t be able to provide natural light for all of the crops, so they’d need enhancement from artificial lighting. It’s one of the major criticisms of trying to have vertical farms.
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