What better to fill the empty lots in our urban jungles than the metaphorical tree designed by William McDonough which he calls the Tower of Tomorrow. Its vegetation-covered roof hopes to transform the city’s upper canopy in order to systematically recycle rainwater while also reducing the urban heat island effect created by the tar covered rooftops most buildings employ.

In a project commissioned by Fortune Magazine, green-guru McDonough has created another conceptual building with feasible roots. Biomimetic functions prevail throughout the exterior and interior of the building, including: self-cleaning interior spaces from plants filtering the air, the aerodynamic shape reduces wind load on the facades, and a water reclamation system redistributes greywater for toilets and other non-potable systems.

posted by: s.a. johnson

Many people know that the Northwestern coast of the United States, with cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, is a hotbed for liberal and civically progressive initiatives when it comes to environmentalism and sustainability. And the Cascadia Region Green Building Council (GBC) is no exception. Its parent organization, the USGBC, is a non-profit organization pushing to foster interest in green building technologies in hopes that all construction will be sustainably built within a generation. These are lofty goals indeed, but with areas like Cascadia setting the example the end result does not seem so far out of reach.

The Cascadia GBC also hosts the Living Building Challenge, a project that presses architects to find new, creative and affordable ways of enhancing our built environment with sustainability in mind. A few characteristics of their ideal building include: generating all energy with renewable resources, capturing and treating all water, and operating efficiently while maximizing beauty. For projects to attain living building status they must cater to six performance areas, or Petals as they say: site, energy, materials, water, indoor quality and beauty + inspiration.

In 2007, the Center for Urban Agriculture by Seattle-based design firm Mithun won “Best of Show” at the Living Building Challenge, and for obvious reasons. It is an entirely self-sufficient urban farm that will grow both vegetables and chickens for local consumption. While its footprint occupies a mere 0.72 acres on the site, the 23-story building contains 318 one- and two-bedroom apartments and produces enough food to feed 450 people annually. The building is also sheathed in over 34,000 sq ft of south facing solar panels that will theoretically match 100 percent of the building’s energy consumption. The ground level features an organic café that will serve food grown on the site to reinforce the importance of travel-free food consumption. As famed suburban polemicist James Howard Kunstler quoted in a 2004 TED Talk, “the age of the 3,000 mile Caesar salad is coming to an end.”

by: s.a.johnson

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.

by: s.a.johnson