cricket housing

eeing the added potential to introduce insects into Western diets, Terreform ONE decided to take their design further and researched cricket behavior and enhancements that ensure the shelter could also be used as a clean way of farming insects for food in urban areas.
Joachim says the team quickly observed that crickets "don't like density" and become fussy with their food in crowded situations.

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Infinity Kitchen

MVRDV designs transparent Infinity Kitchen to make food healthier and sexier


Venice Architecture Biennale 2016: Dutch office MVRDV has designed a completely see-through glass kitchen that aims to inspire a "more healthy, if not sexy" approach to food (+ slideshow).

Making its debut at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Infinity Kitchen has been proposed as a way of improving the cooking process by drawing greater attention to food choice, preparation and waste.

Each of the units and shelves is transparent, as well as the tap, sink area and worktops.

"If we imagine everything is transparent, clear and clean, doesn't it mean that the only thing that is colourful and visible is our food?" said the firm's co-founder Winy Maas.

"Doesn't it then imply that we are encouraged to love the food, in that way, and that maybe it even becomes more healthy, if not sexy?"

MVRDV hopes that the transparent elements will expose all aspects of the kitchen's function and processes, highlighting people's food choices as well as less attractive aspects like waste storage and disposal.

"The Infinity Kitchen wants to make better cuisine, better food preparation practices and it wants to raise awareness for the one room that we all rely so heavily on, and the processes that go on inside of it," said MVRDV.

"How much food do we have hidden away? How much waste is really being created? Is the kitchen really as clean as we like to think it is? But [the Infinity Kitchen] also wants to do one main thing: celebrate food and cooking."

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ReGen Village

It's no secret that today's aggressive agricultural techniques can take a heavy toll on the environment, both on the land used for crops and livestock, and in the surrounding atmosphere.

But a new vision of a more sustainable 'integrated neighbourhood' community is being implemented in the Netherlands, with the first of a series of high-tech farm villages set to be completed next year. The project, being built just outside of Amsterdam, is the brainchild of California-based developer ReGen Villages, and after its pilot community is finished in 2017, the company plans to bring the concept to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Germany.

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plant tower

D+DS Architecture developed an apartment building that allows tenants to grow nutritious food year-round using hydroponic methods.

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indoor farming

INDOOR HARVEST IS A FULL SERVICE, STATE-OF-THE-ART DESIGN - BUILD ENGINEERING FIRM FOR THE INDOOR FARMING INDUSTRY. WE PROVIDE PRODUCTION PLATFORMS AND COMPLETE CUSTOM-DESIGNED BUILD-OUTS FOR BOTH GREENHOUSE AND BUILDING INTEGRATED AGRICULTURE (BIA) GROWS, TAILORED TO THE SPECIFIC NEEDS OF VIRTUALLY ANY PLANT CROP.

With extensive R&D and production collaborations with some of the world’s most reputable names in research, pharmaceuticals and food production, Indoor Harvest maintains a growing design portfolio of Intellectual Property based on our Modular Racking and High Pressure Aeroponics platforms.

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Beverage to Bench

American fast food chain Chick-fil-A, don’t just throw their customers used polystyrene cups into the landfill. Instead, they take those cups and transform them into park benches.

Let’s see how they do it…

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another tower

London firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has revealed details of a concept for a bamboo-framed vertical farm that could provide an alternative to traditional land-intensive farming.

Named Skyfarm, the design is for a multi-storey hyperboloid structure that integrates different types of farming – ranging from traditional planting to aquaponics – and also produces its own energy.

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growing the desert

With 75 percent of its country comprised of desert, it’s not easy for Tunisia to grow food. But the Sahara Forest Project aims to change that with a $30 million facility funded by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. Building on their first projects in Qatar and Jordan, the group will use solar energy and desalination technology to sprout food in the Sahara Desert.

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Japanese Market

Glass walls provide woodland views from inside this structure by Japanese architect Takuya Hosokai, which contains a market and restaurant serving only locally produced food

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fantasy projects

reeHugger has had some trouble digesting vertical farms for a decade, as has Stan Cox of Alternet, who wrote in 2010 that “Although the concept has provided opportunities for architecture students and others to create innovative, sometimes beautiful building designs, it holds little practical potential for providing food.” Now he is at it again, refining his points in a new article in Alternet that was picked up and retitled in Salon as Enough with the vertical farming fantasies: There are still too many unanswered questions about the trendy practice.

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Food Tower

ABF-lab is a paris-based design collective founded in 2011 that specialize in creating projects that mix architecture, energy, climate, and engineering. for a building in romainville, france called ‘food-farm tower’, they aimed to optimize the volume to follow the sun’s path, making it as productive as possible and liberating it from the use of artificial light to supply power to the gardens. the project proposes both housing and gardening at the same time.

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Farm Containers

On a vacant lot near Boston's Logan Airport, Cooney is using four former freight containers -- plus one at another location -- to grow some 30,000 heads of lettuce, herbs and other leafy greens.

"I'm not really a farmer," said the 61-year-old Cooney, who ran software companies before starting Corner Stalk farms in 2013. "But it's more interesting than a desk job."
If 30,000 heads of lettuce sounds like a lot, it is -- and it's the reason why he's able to run a successful farm in one of the country's most expensive cities.
The containers come from Freight Farms, a Boston-based startup that outfits the boxes with lights, growing racks and irrigation systems -- creating what are essentially super efficient growing machines.

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OAXIS

Most Gulf countries import up to 90 percent of their food, which neither bodes well for food security no climate change – since the food that is brought in from Europe and elsewhere has a lot of what are called “food miles.” True to their name, Forward Thinking Architecture proposes a solar-powered hydroponic food belt as a solution.

Acknowledging that they are not designing anything new – because there are already several projects throughout the Arabian peninsula that utilize the sun and hydroponics to deliver food in the desert. One project that comes to mind is the Sahara Forest Project which has received a great deal of international press.

The OAXIS system aims to fuse existing technology in a modular, linear arrangement. The growing medium will consist of prefabricated and recycled steel structures equipped with super efficient irrigation technology that uses roughly 80 percent less water than most farms require. Rooftop solar panels provide energy not only for the architecture itself, but also to power artificial LED lighting that will help promote greater crop growth.

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Jellyfish Barge

Composed of a wood and plastic dome and a base of recycled plastic drums, the Jellyfish Barge is a floating greenhouse that desalinates seawater to irrigate and grow plants. Mimicking the natural phenomenon of the water cycle, one solar panel located by the base of the barge heats up the salted or polluted water and makes it evaporate, turning it into 150 liters per day of clean, fresh water. This water gets recycled over and over into a hydroponic system, which allows crops to grow in an inert bed of clay enriched by mineral nutrients.

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St. Louis Rooftop Garden

Mary Ostafi, an architect who founded the nonprofit Urban Harvest STL in 2011, has led an effort to dump some 40 tons of dirt on the building’s 9,000-square-foot roof and grow organic vegetables in a venture called the Food Roof Farm.

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More Milan

"...While Herzog has a point that the planned structures are indeed fantastical, it is debatable whether interesting, informative exhibitions and wild pavilion designs are mutually exclusive. Furthermore, innovations in architecture, construction, and urban design are an integral part of how the world will address the food challenges of the 21st century..."

"...However, there are a handful of designs that stand out as attempts to rethink the way we build and how it relates to modern agriculture and sustainable food production for the next century. Most of the pavilions use sustainable materials and construction methods that utilize national building techniques. Inside, exhibitions—often interactive—showcase the biodiversity, culture, and food traditions of each nation..."

"...While the architecture of the Milan exposition overall continues the recent trends of the “vanity fair,” some fragments exist that might shed light on how architecture can interact with innovations in agriculture and food production in the coming decades. Ideally, this concept would be pushed much further, but for now these will have to serve as examples for future projects..."

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Food Cart + Mobility + Social Causes

Geneva-based architect Aurélie Monet Kasisi has designed a mobile stand based on street-food carts to travel around Switzerland as a promotional vehicle for a suicide prevention organisation.

"The mobile units often used to serve food or sell various goods host a small collective experience within the city," she said. "That is exactly what I wanted the mobile stand to generate in Swiss public spaces."

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Spain food center

Under a tight budget, this charitable food distribution center in Tarragona, Spain was designed and constructed in just three months. NUA Arquitectures created the building using a combination of prefabricated and constructed elements, allowing the structure to be finished with the help of 120 volunteers in the course of a single afternoon, creating a charitable space that provides a secure area to help those in the area who are in need.

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camp kitchen

"With local government now actively acknowledging the existence of this slum thanks to the kitchen project, and the new water tap part of the government budget for public facilities, a new and unconventional process has started in Terras da Costa. There are now requests for new facilities— a playground, a library—which have to be managed democratically.

There will be plenty of work ahead, and following through with it is what makes the Terras da Costa kitchen an unusually inclusive architectural project. “We wanted to break down the walls of invisibility here,” Saraiva says. “Now, there is a lot to do.”
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Vincent Callebaut Masterplan

The extensive use of trees throughout the rooftops and balconies not only beautifies the district, but aids in its self-sufficiency. These communal gardens provide residents with self-renewing sources of food, helping to locally produce the city’s necessities. Additionally, these orchards provide extraordinary environmental benefits, including CO2 filtration and harmful particulate removal, for a healthier atmosphere.

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