We all know the importance of vertical urban agriculture, but here’s one of the coolest designs I’ve seen yet. Whether or not it holds the key to the future is another matter.
Seattle-based Mithūn Architects recently won the best of show prize at the Cascadia Region Green Building Council’s Living Building Challenge for their slick and conceptually functional high-rise urban farm. The competition challenges architects, engineers and designers to rethink and enhance the current trends in sustainable architecture and create buildings that can survive, like a living organism, by utilizing the environment.
Located in downtown Seattle, Mithūn’s winning Center for Urban Agriculture is a “fully self-sufficient” structure (fine print: in terms of its energy and water) that integrates farming and housing into the same appealingly livable design. Requiring a whopping .72 (point seventy-two) acres of land, the site features 318 apartments (including studios, one-bedrooms and twos), rooftop rainwater collection, solar PV cells (with hydrogen backup), fields for growing food, a chicken farm and a restaurant that uses site-grown food.
Like most design contest winners, the Center for Urban Agriculture looks fantastic. If a building can be sexy, this one definitely arouses.
But questions also arise. In order to be completely self-sufficient gardening-wise, wouldn’t the building’s tenants would have to do their own planting and harvesting? Because if they hired gardeners who came to work via fossil fueled transportation, public or otherwise, that would certainly lose points for the building. Would gardening shifts be part of their HOA responsibilities? And with 318 units, exactly how much would need to be grown to supply the inhabitants and the restaurant with sufficient food?
Regardless of whether or not this design is the answer to the planet’s various crises, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. And as I said before, it sure looks cool.
We face a lot of challenges, complex and sometimes overwhelming challenges. There are no Single Shot / Silver Bullet solutions out there. But, in some ways, there are solution sets that could be considered a Silver BB.
Our challenges include Peak Oil, Global Warming, clean water constraints, food supply challenges (including every increasing food miles, how far food is traveling to the dinner table), poor urban infrastructure, urban heat islands, housing challenges, etc ...
Vertical urban agriculture offers a potential silver BB in this domain ... with a new concept from Seattle offering one of the most integrated and interesting approaches that I've seen to date.
Mithun won a best of show prize (Cascadia Region Green Building Council's Living Building Challenge) for their urban farm design that to integrate farming (vegetables, chickens) and housing to a high-rise in downtown Seattle.
The Living Building Challenge is a competition that encourages building owners, architects, engineers, and design professionals to build in a way that advances knowledge and innovation in the sustainable building industry. The term "living building" comes from the idea that it is possible to create a structure that functions like a living organism - able to survive using only the natural environment around it.
Some features of the "Center for Urban Agriculture" (CUA):
- Fully self-sufficient building: in energy and water.
- 31,000 sq ft rooftop water rainwater collection
- Recycling of gray water (including an ability to handle some of the surrounding area's waste water up to "20 times its own discharge potential")
- 34,000+ sq ft of solar PV cells with hydrogen gas backup
- "Agricultural features include fields for growing veggies and grains, greenhouses, rooftop gardens and even a chicken farm."
- Local produced food is critical for changing energy patterns as "40 percent of an individual's ecological footprint is generated by the embodied energy in food."
- 318 apartments (studio, 1 & 2 bedroom units)
- Restaurant & Cafe (The "Greenhouse" using building grown food.
What is the site requirement? .72 acres!!!
Images from Mithun's PDF entry found at the Cascadia Regional Green Building Council
Hat tip to Jetson Green.
