Hydrophonics
Building Integrated Agriculture
Locating the production of food in our cities and on the buildings within the city (Building Integrated Agriculture) offers a valuable response to two major challenges of modern urban living. The need to reduce the distance food travels before arriving on the plate of urban consumers and the need to reduce the environmental impact of buildings. Our pragmatic approach takes tried and tested technologies from the high-profit, controlled agriculture industry, and sites them directly next to free or cheap sources of energy, within the urban environment.
Two Problems, One Solution
Modern farming feeds billions every day, but is the world’s largest consumer of both land and water, the primary source of water pollution, and accounts for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Increasing urbanization worldwide has underscored the importance of efficiency in the built environment. In the United States, buildings account for 39% of total energy use, 12% of water consumption, and 38% of carbon dioxide emissions, and figures for Europe are similar. Agriculture has an equally significant impact. Fresh produce typically travels several thousand km to reach urban consumers, adding to traffic congestion, air pollution, and carbon emissions. Moving the farm not just into, but onto the city addresses both of these challenges. Cultivation of food crops within the built environment can reduce our environmental footprint, cut transportation costs, enhance food security, save energy, and enrich the physical surroundings of building occupants.
Hydroponics
Hydroponics, the culture of plants in water, is a technically sophisticated commercial practice in most regions of the world. Applications of hydroponics within the built environment appear to date back at least as far as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. As publicly demonstrated by New York Sun Works at the Science Barge greenhouse in Manhattan, and demonstrated commercially at other sites around the world, recirculating hydroponics can produce premium-quality vegetables and fruits using up to 20 times less land and 10 times less water than conventional agriculture, while eliminating chemical pesticides, fertilizer runoff, and carbon emissions from farm machinery and long distance transport.
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