![]() "The building doesn't have to rotate to follow the sun," says Jeremy Edmiston, principal at SYSTEMarchitects in Manhattan and co-designer of the Urban Space Station, as Jeremijenko calls the design. The curved shape of the farms optimizes sun exposure and doesn't require moving parts or grow lights, unlike many greenhouse designs. ![]() And the farms weigh less because they grow in hydroponic, soil-free trays. The steel stilts splayed out underneath distribute the structure's weight to the building's load-bearing walls. Jeremijenko's design sidesteps this issue with legs. "You have to look at the structural composition of the building and line that up with what your operations are going to be," he says. Finding the appropriate site is the first thing he mentions when listing the challenges. Puri runs Gotham Greens, a startup that's trying to become New York City's first commercial rooftop farming operation. That was a major obstacle in Viraj Puri's hunt for a rooftop to cultivate. Not all roofs can support the hundreds or thousands of pounds of soil and water that a farm needs. Her fixtures may be more economical than other urban farm concepts because they take up real estate that otherwise goes unused, and unlike other urban farm designs, they can pack in the plants, because everything, from the integrated systems to their bubble shape, is a slave to efficiency. Natalie Jeremijenko, an aerospace engineer and environmental health professor at New York University, came up with a rooftop design to solve these common problems for urban farming. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play This is because they are costly to develop and maintain (since they are in high-rent areas) and the product-food-is already made cheaply elsewhere. So far, however, no urban farm design has gone mainstream. The average piece of food may travel 1300 to 1500 miles from farm to plate, according to studies cited by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Urban farms solve the prime source of waste-in fuel, pollutants and time-in the food industry: transportation. And that could grow, as cities strive for efficiency and reduce fuel consumption. By recycling air and water, the two drink together, breathe together and regulate each other's temperature.Ībout 15 percent of the world's food is grown in cities, according to the U.S. Like their biological analogs, the greenhouses tap into the buildings below them, giving and taking in a kind of mechanical symbiosis. They are rooftop farms, and they could represent a future segment of agriculture. And they represent the principle behind a new concept for urban farming: bug-like greenhouses perched on the roofs of skyscrapers. The acacia and its ant army are a textbook example of mutualism between species. In return, the acacia feeds the ants a protein from its leaflets and nectar from its stalk. It protects the plant from other insects, bigger animals and well-meaning trail guides. This particular ant, Pseudomyrmex ferruginea, is a hard-biting acacia defender. And when the guide agitates them, ants scurry out. The thorns are wide and hollow and grow in pairs, like a demonic two-fingered peace sign. A trail guide in Costa Rica might stop to flick the thorns on an acacia shrub.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |