Fields and orchards in the SKY: Highrise 'urban farms' are the future of agriculture, claims architect



Highrise includes orchards, meadows and rice fields along with offices



Energy is stored from sun and wind, and heat is trapped by tower's ‘wings’



No buyer has been found but the concept has inspired smaller projects



Tokyo's nine-storey Pasona Urban Farm, for example, allows employees to grow their own food in reserved green spaces at work

It might seem like blue-sky thinking, but this concept for a highrise farm may just make the utopian vision of sustainable cities a reality.

Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has designed a 132-floor ‘urban farm’ which he claim is the answer to a healthier future for the estimated six billion people who will live in cities by 2050.

Imagine, he says, stepping out of your highrise apartment into a sunny, plant-lined corridor, biting into an apple grown in the orchard on the fourth floor.



The vertical farm is shaped like the wings of a dragonfly and the design of Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut. He believes it is the answer to a healthier future for the six billion people who will live in cities by 2050

You take the lift to your office, passing the rice paddy and one of the many gardens housed in the glass edifice that not only heats and cools itself, but also captures rainwater and recirculates domestic waste as plant food.

This, claims Mr Callebaut, is the city of the future. He envisions a self-sufficient ‘living organism’ of avant-garde buildings which some critics have dismissed as daft or a blight on the landscape.

‘We need to invent new ways of living in the future,’ the 36-year-old designer told AFP at the Paris studio where he plies his trade.

‘The city of tomorrow will be dense, green and connected. The goal is to bring agriculture and nature back into the urban core so that by 2050...we have green, sustainable cities where humans live in balance with their environment.’

Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut (pictured) claims his ideas were initially met with criticism. 'They made fun of me,' he said. 'They said I created a piece of science fiction'

The structure includes areas for meat, dairy and egg production, orchards, meadows and rice fields along with offices and flats, gardens and public recreation spaces

WHAT IS DRIVING INTEREST IN VERTICAL FARMING?

It is estimated that food production will have to increase by 70 percent by 2050 to meet human demand.

Agriculture already consumes more than 30 percent of the world's land area -- cropland alone accounts for 10 percent. About 3.5 billion people, half the world population, live in cities today, up from 13 percent a century ago. By 2030, the urban share will swell to 60 per cent, rising further to 70 percent by 2050 when the world's occupants will number over nine billion. The world's cities occupy only two percent of land on Earth, but account for 60-80 per cent of energy consumption and about 75 percent of planet-warming carbon emissions. By 2050, about 15 billion hectares (37 billion acres) or five percent of global land, will be covered by built-up areas.

Sources: United Nations, International Energy Agency, Food and Agricultural Organisation

Each building, he said, must ultimately be a ‘self-sufficient, mini-power station.’

The quest for sustainable urban living has never been more urgent as people continue flocking to cities which encroach ever more onto valuable rural land, gobbling up scarce natural resources and making a disproportionate contribution to pollution and Earth-warming carbon emissions.

Enter Mr Callebaut with his project ‘Dragonfly’ - a design for a massive, twin-towered, ‘vertical farm’ on New York's Roosevelt Island.

From each tower springs a large, glass-and-steel wing, so that the edifice resembles the insect after which it was named.

The structure includes areas for meat, dairy and egg production, orchards, meadows and rice fields along with offices and flats, gardens and public recreation spaces.

Energy is harvested from the sun and wind, and hot air is trapped between the building ‘wings’ to provide heating in winter. In summer, cooling is achieved through natural ventilation and transpiration from the abundant plant growth.

Plants grow on the exterior shell to filter rain water, which is captured and mixed with liquid waste from the towers, treated organically and used as fertiliser.

And at the base of the colossus is a floating market on the East River for the inhabitants to sell their organic produce.

‘They made fun of me. They said I created a piece of science fiction,’ Mr Callebaut says of his detractors.

But as awareness has grown of the plight of our planet, overpopulation and climate change, his ideas have gained traction, and the Dragonfly design has been exhibited at an international fair in China.

At the base is a floating market on the East River for the inhabitants to sell their organic produce

Mr Callebaut has also drafted a concept for a floating city resembling a lily pad that will house refugees forced from their homes by climate change.

And he hopes to sell a design for a ‘farmscraper’ in Shenzhen, China that will include housing, offices, leisure space and food gardens.

As yet, Mr Callebaut has found no buyers for these big projects.

‘With the recent economic recession, politicians and government may... have been reluctant to venture into such new, large-scale endeavours that have not been tested before,’ Emilia Plotka, a sustainability expert at the Royal Institute of Royal Architects, told AFP of Dragonfly and similar projects.

But she pointed out the concept has inspired other, smaller projects.

Plants grow on the exterior shell to filter rain water, which is captured and mixed with liquid waste from the towers, treated organically and used as fertiliser

‘Instead of majestically tall bionic towers plonked in riverbeds, vertical farms have been rather more modestly integrated into existing buildings, derelict industrial sites and floating barges,’ said Ms Plotka.

One example is the Pasona Urban Farm -- a nine-storey office building in Tokyo that allows employees to grow their own food in specially reserved green spaces at work.

‘Whilst the buy-in may not be as noticeable at the moment, it certainly is widespread and growing,’ said Ms Plotka of the vertical farm movement.

‘I suspect most other new vertical farms will remain hidden in disused urban spaces or existing business and domestic blocks, which is not bad at all as they will use fewer resources to be set up and enhance their surrounding environments and communities.’