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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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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Canada Green Roofs

The city bylaw requires green roofs to be 80 per cent covered three years after planting. If you're harvesting crops every season, the green roof is periodically naked while the new crops grow, and this breaks the law, Throness explained.

“I think the fear was that edible plants would take too much labour and water,” and the city wanted to give developers a low-maintenance solution for building green roofs, Throness said. “But we’ve been monitoring our water use and don’t require any more.”

After a pilot project in 2013, last summer the roof hosted a five-crop rotational farm that produced more than two tonnes of vegetables, she said. “We’ve found that we can grow everything here.”

The harvest is split between campus kitchens and the Gould St. farmer’s market on Wednesdays.

Ontario imports billions of dollars of produce from California each year and this supply is becoming threatened due to the state’s prolonged drought, said Throness. Rooftop agriculture adds local food security to the existing environmental benefits of green roofs.

For Peck, while rooftop farms aren’t appropriate everywhere — older buildings often can’t handle the extra weight — they’re an essential part of the future of the city.

“There are still hundreds of millions of square feet of roofs in Toronto that could still be greened,” Peck said. “We invest billions and billions of dollars on grey infrastructure. It would pay great dividends to devote a small part of that to green infrastructure.”

By the numbers:

72,020: Square metres of green roofs built in Toronto in 2014

232,000: Square metres of green roofs already in existence

185,000: Additional square metres approved.

4,984 hectares: Land area identified as the total available area for green roofs in the City of Toronto, about 8% of the total.

20 %: Minimum area that must be covered by green roof on new buildings.

2 tonnes: Amount of produce produced by a 929-square-metre farm on the roof of Ryerson University’s George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre last summer.

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Architecture and Food

Specialist Design Consultancy dedicated to developing the architecture of Building Integrated Agriculture.

We work with building owners and developers to unlock value in their sunlit roofscapes and concept designs for new-builds by developing a model of horticultural production infrastructure supplying local markets and consumers with fresh produce.

Once roofscapes are activated and relationships with their hosts are negotiated and agreed, A&f will form branches of sister company * Hyperlocal to take on the horticultural operation. We hope to eventually develop London's own indigenous, high-volume, resilient food production capacity supplying fresh produce at stable prices, free from supply-side volatility, over the long term.

Urban Agriculture is a field steadily gaining attention for its commercial and social opportunities. We believe it will be a major influence on the development of architecture and a powerful tool in urban food security, community development and climate change adaptation.

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Vertical Farming update

"If you follow architecture or design at all, you may have come across aggressively futuristic renderings of skyscrapers topped with rice paddies, or tree-shaped buildings, sprouting plant life from every orifice."

Check out the updates on what's happening with Vertical Farming here:

floating farms

...designed a solar-powered floating farm. What is unique about it is the fact that through its green technology, it produces 20 tons of vegetables every day.

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interaction between producers and consumers

The Future Food District is in the centre of the Expo Milano 2015 site, in a 6500 sqm area between the Cardo and the Decumanus. Designed by Carlo Ratti Associati, the pavilion is the product of a partnership between Coop and MIT Senseable City Lab, and aims to answer questions such as: “How will we do our shopping? What will we eat? Who will handle food and food products before they get to consumers’ tables in the future?”.

Carlo Ratti Associati offer an experiment, a new retail layout with greater interaction between producers and consumers, a reference to the old-fashioned market. In the“supermarket” area the layout of the goods is organised on the basis of five routes representing five production processes, and “augmented or intelligent labels” designed by the architects provide consumers with complete information on the produce or food purchased. The Exhibition Area will be a multipurpose facility projecting visitors into the future, for example with prototypes of sea farms.

Carlo Ratti Associati is the focus of an exhibition to be held by SpazioFMGperl'Architettura during the 2015 Salone del Mobile in Milan, due to open on Monday, April 13 2015.

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mega food parks

NEW DELHI: The government is likely to soon announce allocation of 17 mega food parks, entailing a total investment of Rs 2,100 crore, to various firms for development.

A mega food park provides various facilities to food processors, farmers, retailers and exporters, helping achieve faster growth of food processing industries.

According to sources, Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal is likely to announce next week the sanctioning of these 17 mega food parks in states including Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Bihar.

The total investment in these mega food parks is estimated at Rs 2,100 crore, of which the government's contribution would be to the tune of Rs 850 crore, they added.

In these mega food parks, 50,000 people are expected to get employment while 80,000 farmers would also be benefitted.

Under the scheme (2008-09) of mega food parks, the Food Processing Ministry had sanctioned 42 projects throughout the country. Of these, 25 parks have already been allocated.

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farm-x modular vertical farm

food production has historically occurred in areas of low real-estate interest, far from densely populated settlements or cities. ‘farm-x’, by zurich’s conceptual devices, is a modular vertical farm concept that shifts the historical dichotomy between food production and consumption. the facility is able to grow up to five tons of fresh food per day in its 1000m2 area using specific hydroponic farming techniques and full climate control.

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Ecotrust's The Redd to bring small food-makers together with social justice bent

Ecotrust has a long history working with Oregonians in rural areas who are producing food and resources, but have always struggled to connect that work with urban consumers.

Nathan Kadish, director of investment strategy at the conservation organization, said the recent purchase of a former foundry in the Central Eastside will help bridge the two. The Redd, named for the riverbed nests where salmon spawn, will host small food-makers -- the people between farmers and diners -- who often don't have consistent use of kitchen space or room to store ingredients.

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OMA's Food Port

The enclosed program is organized by the shared needs and facilities of identified tenants. The Northeast corner of the site is anchored with retail, a coffee roastery and juicery production facilities. Aggregation and processing facilities are located at the center of the site, with a connection to Seed Capital’s offices and the kitchen incubator. The Jefferson County Extension Office is lifted to create a strong connection between their demonstration farm below, and directly connected to the Urban Farm. The recycling facility is placed at the Southwest corner of the site for ease of access. Corresponding outdoor spaces aligned with surrounding thoroughfares include a market plaza, food truck plaza, and edible garden. The efficient building plan also allows for systematic growth to allow the building and its tenants to develop over time.

The Food Port provides a comprehensive survey of the food industry and its processes while relocating many food programs typically separated from the buyer back into the heart of the city. It defines a new model for how the relationship between consumer and producer can be defined and addresses uncaptured market demand and inefficiencies within the local food industry.

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worlds food markets

"When it comes to fresh food, there has long been a dividing line between Britain, the United States – or English-speaking countries – and much of the rest of the world. Early and rapid industrialisation in the former led to a divorce between great swathes of the population and the land they once farmed.

Refrigeration, railways, suburban growth and the car have given rise to the supermarket, with its shrink-wrapped food, sell-by dates, and the branding and advertising of what we eat. Driving to edge-of-town supermarkets has resulted in the closure of family shops, the de-valuing of high streets and a decline in interaction between buyers, growers and sellers of food.

The role of the supermarket was once played by covered markets in Britain and North America just as it is today in much of the world where people still want to look closely at the food they plan to buy, and to enjoy the incomparable buzz and the feast of all senses covered markets offer."

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From Wal-Mart to Farmers-Mart

Officials in McAllen, Texas, were faced with this problem when their local Walmart shut down. Instead of letting the giant store sit vacant, they did something amazing. They transformed it into the largest single-floor public library in America...including an indoor farmers market...

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Food Hub Management Certificate Program

Food Hub Management Certificate Program
UVM’s Food Hub Management Professional Certificate Program – the first of its kind in the country – is an innovative blend of hands-on, community-based, online and on-campus learning that will prepare you for effective management of food hubs and provide you with essential tools to advance your career in food systems.

Develop Essential Knowledge & Skills

Business Planning & Assessment
Market Development & Value Chain Facilitation
Product Development, Marketing, & Sales
Purchasing & Supply Chain Management
Processing and Distribution
Facility/Warehouse Management
HR, Staffing, & Communication
Food Safety and Risk Management

Who should apply?

Individuals planning to create, lead, and/or manage a food hub.
Those with food hub experience and passion for a career in food systems who are looking for their next step.
Professionals seeking to enhance or change their career to a focus on the sustainable food market.
Staff members who are poised for leadership development within enterprises meeting the increasing demand for regionally sourced good food.

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Food Hubs

Food Hubs, a topic of recent inquiry. The design of our food system to utilize, process, distribute, share and educate. This example comes from Louisville KY, and the Seed Capital Kentucky. 

"Seed Capital Kentucky released master plans for the food marketplace last week. Netherlands-based architect OMA worked alongside GBBN Architects of Louisville to design a campus where local farmers can package, distribute and sell goods."

"The project aims to reduce the amount of travel, money and time that goes into local food production, while making consumer access easier.

"Our vision for this project is one that collapses a lot of those middle men and transactions into one place where they can all work together to help create more fresh, regional food and help our region feed itself more sustainably," said Seed Capital Kentucky founder Stephen Reily."

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Mobile Food Market

"...mobile food market ....brings fresh produce at good prices to the people most in need. Everybody pitched in; the Toronto Transit Commission donated a wheel-trans bus designed to carry people in wheelchairs, so it is accessible to everyone."
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Growing on a Bridge

The Cloud Collective has installed an algae cultivation system on a highway overpass in Geneva, Switzerland, as a demonstration of the role urban settings can play in the production of food and plants.

Designed as part of the garden festival Genève: Villes et Champs, the ‘Culture Urbaine’ installation is made up of a closed system of transparent tubes connected to the exterior of the bridge.

Algae are cultivated inside the tubes, grown using only sunlight and C02.

The algae can be used to filter air, as combustible biomass or even as raw material for different cosmetic and alimentary products.

A steel structure running vertical to the bridge holds the system’s pumps, filters and solar panels and provides a written description of the project for pedestrians and cyclists.

The Cloud Collective hopes that the installation prompts future practices of reinterpreting existing infrastructures for the production of food and biomass.

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