Vertical Farming: URBAN agriCULTURE for the 21st Century

For the last century, establishing socially conscious and sustainable urban environments has been a deeply polarizing issue within the architectural community. And though theories on the matter have been plentiful, limited action has been taken towards the actual goal. As the planet’s population climbs higher, urban centers are experiencing a swell like never before. The percentage of Earth’s occupants living in urban areas surpassed that of rural areas in 2007 for the first time in history. This mass migration towards cities has created problems with food distribution and furthered the disconnection between humans and our own food production. To combat this issue, architects all over the world are hoping to develop an agricultural tower to serve as a prototype for sustainable methods of creating and maintaining vertical farming in urban environments.

Our cities are in dire need of transformation if they wish to make it through the 21st century. With the worldwide population growing, it is estimated that by the year 2050 nearly 80% of people will be living in urban areas. Lack of plantable land in arid climates, nutrient deficient soils from over-planting, increase in fuel prices used for transport and a scarcity of irrigation from depleted water sources are crucial problems that need to be dealt with. A new approach needs to be taken to account for and counteract these looming environmental complications which will have an especially adverse affect on the urban dwellers who live removed from any direct source of food or sustenance. The implementation of urban agriculture, housed in towers throughout cities worldwide, is an efficient, sustainable, achievable, and above all local solution to many of these problems.

In the coming days The Rathaus will be posting some of the best proposals for vertical farms created by the likes of SOA Architects, William McDonough, Gordon Graff, Dickson Despommier and Mithun. Our hopes in posting this information about the use of agricultural towers in our urban cores will heighten interest not only in vertical farming but also the radical changes in attitude needed to sustain our future cities.

Communicating Through Architecture: Media Facades and the Digital Infrastructure

In Times Square, 1996, the first media facade is erected. At 1,000 square feet the screen now pales in comparison to the likes of those found in Seoul, Tokyo and even newer construction in Times Square. This technology, once limited to the United States, can now be found in nearly every metropolitan area worldwide and has become a symbol of a country’s power or a company’s position in their industry. While media facades are the billboards of the digital infrastructure, the layer extends so much deeper reaching into nearly every aspect of our daily lives. The proliferation of media facades, similar to that of cellular phones, PDAs, Bluetooth technology, laptop computers, and GPS technology is often dismissed or simply goes unnoticed, yet these devices allow instantaneous connection and relay of information with other people almost anywhere in the world. This is a feat found only in science fiction just 25 years ago. As the world becomes more and more connected, questions about sense of place and “here” are raised. Issues of this nature add additional challenges to the architect’s burden of creating powerful, place-specific architecture.

Architects and designers in the first half of the twentieth century were frequently, and often bitterly, at odds with how to handle the explosion of mechanized technology in the architectural landscape, debating whether the machine was a blessing or a curse when used in sterile, inhuman situations. The unnaturally perfected products of machines have, as predicted, come to dominate our consumer goods over those produced by hand in the last century. Now that the analog nature of machinery has cemented its importance in our cultures, we humans have turned over yet another new leaf in the creation of digital technology. Even more quickly than the spread of the machine a century ago, digital technologies have invaded our lives in the last decade thus creating an inter-connectivity never before seen. It’s an interconnected global community that places family members thousands of miles away within closer reach than next-door neighbors. Media is increasingly brought to our homes through Internet and HD television, replacing newspapers and magazines. The digitized and animated presentations in these new methods of conveying information exploits the natural human instincts that draw one to motion and interaction. Increasingly this is accomplished through public media facades in urban areas.

The digitization of information creates a potentially seamless dissemination of information in urban areas where watchful passersby are present twenty-four hours a day. The most densely populated areas in cities harbor the highest potential for testing new technologies because public opinion is easily corralled with such high exposure. Animated media facades are the newest, largest form of communication to be implemented in urban centers. The facades, often applied to existing buildings but increasingly integrated into new building design, provide architects, designers, advertisers and civic institutions with space to convey their given messages in the heavily traversed plazas and intersections of the world’s increasingly dense urban centers.

The dissemination of information has not, however, been the singular function behind media architecture. Digital infrastructure is progressively taking on an interactive role, providing both artists and pedestrians with an enormous public platform for self-expression. Whether in accordance with city planning or using artistic guerilla tactics, these large-scale interactive displays are creating a new perception of architecture while challenging classical notions of the facade. Whether playing host to a net of 10,000 LEDs or providing an eight-story backdrop to a powerful digital projection, even century old facades are being reused and redefined.

A number of examples of this type of digital infrastructure are currently displayed throughout the world. Here are a few photographic and video examples of the projects:

Dexia Tower, Brussels

Nova 3D Light Sculpture, Zurich

The NOVA trials from squidie on Vimeo

Kunsthaus, Graz

SPOTS, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin

Graffiti Research Lab

Crown Fountain, Chicago

special thanks to Ashlen Williams

Media Facades Festival – Berlin 2008

Stadion Center, Vienna

The Media Facades Festival takes place this week in Berlin. The event is organized by mediaarchitecture.org and brings together participants from a wide range of design backgrounds, all of which are interested in the use of public space. Through meetings and workshops the festival uses collaboration to positively affect the “approach to technology, architecture and media art in modern cities.” The Rathaus’ own s.a.johnson conducted an email interview with the festival’s Exhibition Director and Co-Curator Gernot Tscherteu to discuss, among others, the emerging field of media architecture, designing digital facades and the influence of Blade Runner on modern design.

… Continue Reading

Designis Personae

For designers out there unaware of Metropolis, this magazine is a must-read for those seeking monthly updates on highly relevant issues concerning architecture and design culture. The magazine aims to bring progressive and generally environmentally sensitive creations and ideas out of laboratories, studios and construction sites and into the public eye. As Metropolis itself puts it: “Subjects range from the sprawling urban environment to intimate living spaces to small objects of everyday use. In looking for why design happens in a certain way, Metropolis explores the economic, environmental, social, cultural, political, and technological context.”

Here is a fun Metropolis online article Designis Personae about student and faculty stereotypes, specifically in schools of architecture. These personalities types are, however, certainly encountered in every design related field. The Rathaus’ Designis Personae favorites for faculty and student, respectively, are:

THE BITTER-ENDER. This is the theory-head or other pan-flash ideologue unable to update his or her shtick, adopted a million years ago from some lapsing mentor or deceased guru. Begins all comments with “Peter used to say…” Some students are bedazzled. Most are unmoved. All who are not a close reflection of himself will be attacked. Those who are will get an unpaid internship on the spot.

THE LEAKER. The one who always loses it. He or she has been awake for three weeks. He or she has been totally misunderstood by his or her critic for six weeks. He or she has been dreaming things in his or her head that he or she is unable to draw on his or her piece of paper all of his or her immeasurably frustrating life. It’s not incompetence, but there are, shall we say, some issues with creativity. We see before us one half-scratched pencil drawing, one limp tissue-paper model, and a thousand perfect La Tourette monasteries locked inside. You’d cry too.

Red Balloon To Do 6 – Gavin Snider

Here is some additional work from Red Balloon to Do 6 by Gavin Snider for his band Midnight Vinyl. More of Gavin’s illustrations can be found on his blog, The Revolution Gets Industrial.

posted by: s.a.johnson