Vertical farms may be the answer to fresh, sustainable food in the city, but the majority of designs see them plonked into an urban space with little regard for integrating them into their surroundings.

However, a concept for New York may hold the answer, with a scheme that sees food grown alongside living spaces, and a design that fits comfortably into the wider city.

The winner of a recent design competition held by AWR – Architecture Workshop in Rome, the design, by Jospeh Varholick and Posin Wang, is quite unlike any vertical farm concept we’ve previously seen.

Dubbed the Ascending Line, the concept is designed to nestle alongside the High Line, the linear public park that rises above the streets on Manhattan on a disused section of railway line. Extending the shot of green that the High Line brings to the area, the Ascending Line project would connect the High Line to the street level, while providing living space and food for the city’s inhabitants.

“Connection to the urban context is paramount,” said Varholick and Wang in their competition entry. “A split-level market connects to the High Line and street level, providing a gastronomic urban asset as well as the experience of urban theatre as the loomed vertical farm performs.”

Deployable vertical farming

This ‘performance’ is at the heart of the vertical farm’s design. At the core of the building is a central atrium where the majority of the plants are grown. However, instead of being stacked on static shelves, they are arranged in a loom system that slowly rotates shelves of plants up and down the structure.

This rotation, which is powered by two wind turbines located at the top sides of the loom, moves sown plantings up to the top of the structure, where they can flourish in the city’s summer weather, and brings mature crops that are ready for harvest and consumption back down.

As the plants reach the bottom of the loom, they are automatically harvested, transferring the produce to a crop silo, before a seed drill applies new plants and the process begins again.

Varholick and Wang have brilliantly designed the system so that all aspects of the growing cycle are taken care of.

The top of the loom is supported by two spherical dirigibles, which are partially covered by a photovoltaic array. This powers an electrolysis converter that turns supplied water – or H₂O – into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is vented into the local atmosphere, while the hydrogen is fed back up to the dirigibles, keeping them fully afloat.

Above them are two stratospheric moisture harvesters: balloon-like structures that water condenses onto before dripping down their tethers to a collector below, and being used to water the plants.

The dirigibles not only keep the loom structure at its required height, but enable it to be lowered in the winter, meaning that unlike in many vertical farms, the plants are grown seasonally in natural conditions.

“The vertical farm is deployable, allowing it to be collapsed and sorted during winter,” explained Varholick and Wang. “This means that the permanent structure and envelope of the building does not exceed 50m.

“During winter, plastic sheets are deployed over the atrium, insulating the residential units and providing a greenhouse for seasonal crops.”

The result of all this is that in the summer the building’s centrepiece is a towering, slowly rotating structure of greenery, which can be harvested to provide food for New Yorkers, while in the winter the building shortens and continues to produce food.

Growing in the home

While the loom structure is undoubtedly the main form of growing in the Ascending Line, it is by no means the only one.

40% of the building is dedicated to the farm, but a further 40% is classed as mixed residential, with the remaining 20% divided between commercial spaces, such as cafes, (15%) and services for the building.

However, each apartment will have its own private growing space, in the form of a balcony, where additional produce can be grown to the tastes of the resident.

In addition, some spaces where other designers would simply have put more apartments will instead be used as communal roof terraces, where additional plants can be grown. These spaces, selected due to the angle of light they receive from the location’s sun, will enable a greater sense of community, while adding to the array of produce that the building produces.

“The practice of agriculture exists on three social scales: the individual (balcony garden), multiple households (terraced communal gardens) and the city (skyward farm at the atrium),” explained Varholick and Wang.

Future of farming?

While the award-winning design is just a concept, it poses some fascinating potential ideas for future urban farming.

The designers took great care to effectively integrate residential and growing spaces, and with so many cities suffering from a shortage of living space, this is certainly a concept that could prove popular.

It would also make for a far more appealing urban home than many urban glass-and-steel structures, bringing greenery back into urban living in a way that many miss.

The loom concept is both highly interesting from a farming point of view, and utterly cool from a city skyline angle. Few cities would fail to be improved by the addition of a towering structure of green topped by dirigibles, and a higher prevalence of fresh produce in cities would most definitely be welcomed.

See more high-res concept images of the vertical farm project in the accompanying picture gallery.