Sky Farm Proposed for Downtown Toronto

This seems more funny than actually practical. The entire point of skyscrapers is to maximize internal acreage while minimizing external. It makes both the farming and the use of the skyscraper more difficult.

If we are going to grow plants on a building, let's at least do it indoors, which makes pest and weed control a LOT easier. Devote the entire southern exposure to greenhouses. Take the line of offices that would have been placed there and replace the interior wall side with a glass barrier so that people can see the plants but aren't oppressed by the greenhouse heat, water spray, etc. Fresh salads for lunch, even in the winter!

Who's job would it be to harvest the outside?

I'd say clean up the air in the city before you start growing anything to be consumed.

Actually, the vertical farm article says it was invented by Dr. Dickson Despommier, does it not? That's like giving the model maker credit instead of the Architect.

LA: I believe Dr Despommier invited submissions, there are four different designers credited on his site.

Wouldn't something like this solve the ENTIRE problem with ethanol, making it a perfectly viable solution for our fuel needs?

I mean, the problems with ethanol are twofold:

1. transport: it is VERY costly to get ethanol from the Midwest farms where it's grown and made to the cities where it is used as fuel.

If you have a series of gigantic skyscrapers closer to the cities that will consume the fuel, the cost of transport disappears. The farms can be placed on the outskirts where land is cheaper, but still close enough to make building pipelines or whatever infrastructure that is necessary affordable.

2. There just isn't enough land to make enough ethanol to satisfy our fuel needs. Even if every last square acre of land was used for ethanol it would only amount to like 25% of our current consumption and the cost of food would skyrocket.

These buildings wouldn't be taking up ANY land otherwise used to grow crops for food. The footprint of each building is small compared to the equivalent acreage of food production, this article claims the building produces as much as 1000 acres of farmland.

So 50 of these things = 50,000 acres of farmland, and would probably fit in less than 500 acres of land. You could just keep building these things until we have enough ethanol to convert over to 100% ethanol, thus radically reducing our co2 output while simultaneously freeing us from dependence on foreign oil.

LOL- looks like the TIFF site just got a re-design!!

If this is open air as it appears, I would have to wonder what the health concerns might be of growing crops in the smoggy city air. I seem to recall a post on treehugger a while ago where they showed a building being washed down form 60 years of pollutions or something and going from grey/black to a very light color. I really don't want to eat veggies and fruit coated like that.....

How do you get a tractor up there?

If by hand, I think we aready have a shortage of illegal imigrants.

2 words: cucumber soda

Uh folks - Toronto is in Canada and that far above the ground the wind from Lake Ontario is gonna freeze the butts off any edible plant that's stupid enough to be growing outdoors between the middle to end of October and the beginning of May. If you count 'em that leaves about 5 months (give or take) grow outdoors.

Maybe you could turn it into a ski hill in the winter.

Sorry space, but this would rely quite heavily on artificial lighting, which means you'd need electicity. Then you would hardly get 100% conversion of that electrical energy into chemical energy in the plants. Better just to use the electricity in the first place than make ethanol this way.

As far as the concept, it would make much more sense to have 5 or 10 storey, large structures that operated in this manner, and more on the outskirts of a city than the interior. Building skyscrapers is very inefficient, especially when you'd be using artificial light, anyway.

Of course, such a setup would require absolutely vast amounts of energy to be able to feed any significant number of people. Not impractical necessarily, but it would certainly take some serious effort to make it feasible.

This would essentially be a productive green roof.

This is from the EPA's page on green roofs:

* Reduce sewage system loads by assimilating large amounts of rainwater.
* Absorb air pollution, collect airborne particulates, and store carbon.
* Protect underlying roof material by eliminating exposure to the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation and extreme daily temperature fluctuations.
* Serve as living environments that provide habitats for birds and other small animals.
* Offer an attractive alternative to traditional roofs, addressing growing concerns about urban quality of life.
* Reduce noise transfer from the outdoors.
* Insulate a building from extreme temperatures, mainly by keeping the building interior cool in the summer.

I really really like this idea.

http://www.epa.gov/hiri/strategies/greenroofs.html

That is a very fascinating design. I am interested to see how it works. If it is a huge success, we might start seeing these in most major cities around the world.

This seems like a very interesting idea for large urban environments. I say interesting, not good, because there would be a huge number of technical and economic issues that would have to be addressed before scyscraper farming could be viable.

The first problem that comes to mind is food distribution. How does one get the food from the skyscraper to the outlets in the middle of modern urban sprawl? Can anyone imagine the traffic congestion nightmare that was cause in midtown NYC?

rofl, that looks funny. However, if it serves 35 thousand people per year, then it's quite nice.

Can you imagine the impact if every building had at least some greenery? not necessarily a garden, but anything that breaths co2 and makes the building more attractive would suffice.

Umm, guys, have you any idea how much a chicken farm actually smells....

Also, a large part of the building needs to be reserved for harvesting equipment, etc, packaging facilities, storage, etc etc.

Thirdly, it says 2.7 million sq feet of floorspace, 8 million of growing area, but it doesn't seem that way when you look at the plans, more like the other way round.

Fourth, you wanna pick all that produce by hand? need lots of people = high costs.

Also, artificial lighting is expensive in terms of energy and money. A regular farm can also use artificial lights so thats nothing new here.
I don't think you can say 1 acre euqals 4-6 acres of normal farmland when a farm can do the same horizontaly.

Otherwise good idea, except maybe difficult to implement in reality...

As much ag production as a 1,000-acre farm? Umm, how were those figures calculated?

I'm going to start growing wheat on the walls of my cubicle. It's 9' x 12' and 5.5' high. I estimate that I can grow as much wheat as the entire state of Nebraska.

Go ahead, check my math.

I'm with the green roof idea.

Imagine the roof of every building in a ghetto part of a city providing the equivalent of an orchard of apples or other food during parts of the year and elleviating the hunger of the poor people too foolsh to spend money on food instead of "bling".

I want one on my roof.

You guys.... the produce is grown INSIDE the building!! Not on the outside!! Hence the artificial lighting and the below sentence where it says, one INDOOR acre. The image shows that it would look like on the inside, it is sliced.

"Skyscraper farms can operate year-round with artificial lighting, so, on average, one indoor acre is the equivalent to between four and six outdoors"

@ Doug Green

Well doug, you may have a point there. Toronto is in Canada (Ontario, Canada actually). But that's where it ends. It's like you're saying there is no farmland in Canada because of the cold. Keep in mind that northern California is at almost the same latitude as Toronto.

You might as well be saying don't bother farming in North Dakota (89% of the state is covered with farmland - google "farmland dakota") because it'll snow.

Good point. Also, invest in a map.

That thing looks horrendous, especially at street level where it seems to be a four-story tall concrete block. I don't think a building that size will go on that corner gracefully in any way.

One of the problems about this proposal is the fact that there is already a tower being built in it's proposed location.

Looks great - I'd love to see it happen. Too bad that location is already taken up by the Festival Tower ... perhaps the hotel should be demolished for this tower. It would be a great improvement to the street corner.

Forget about transporting the food out of the building. Think about what it takes to produce it. We already have water shortages in and around big cities in the summer, and these large amounts of crops need huge supplies of water to grow.

Are they going to use soil or aquaculture? Keep in mind that if you use soil, you'll have to rotate crops and add nutrition. This can be done by using chemical fertilisers, compost or manure. And from time to time you will need to change all the soil on all the floors. For aquaculture you'll need huge amounts of chemical fertilisers who are very polluting to produce and not the most healthy stuff you can find.

It looks like a good idea, but there are quite a few challenges left.

The problem is that you aren't magically making new sunlight available for growing food on these towers.... you are taking it from the multiple acres worth of buildings and people who live in your enormous shadow.

It's an interesting concept, but that's about it.

Hey guys, if you look closely you can see that it isn't open air, its enclosed...so pollution and air quality/temperature aren't an issue.

Also, this building generates some of its own power, so the energy requirements wouldn't be as crazy as you'd think.

I think it is a really interested design

I find it funny and ridiculous that some are questioning why this should be built, and why this or that should be done first.

Plants clean air through photosynthesis. Plants attract and promote fresher minds (psychologically.) Who will cultivate the greens? Who washes the windows? Technology is not limited, especially today, to our minds.

Think before you type.
Maybe if we all had fresh food and u-picks outside our windows we could think more clearly.

This is B.S. The building going into that spot is Festival Towers. The Toronto International Film Festival Condos. Plus there are like 3 restaurants on the lot that have no plans to close.

To those talking about water requirements, the system would be far more enclosed than average farming, there would be practically no water lost to evaporate (a very big deal with open farms). So while it would definitely require a lot of water, that water usage will be largely static, fill it up once, it won't need to be replinished that much.

Ideally, in the future, the chemical feedstocks could be provided by the waste facilities within the city. Hopefully this is part of the overall plan to be considered (because plenty of useful chemicals are simply flushed down the sewers in cities, and it's a shame really).

And lastly, if they're going high tech they should really look into automated farming/processing methods. Automatic tomato pickers and such. If it could work the whole thing could grow food for 35k with only a comparatively small number of workers.

hey space dont mention that becasue is oil companies see that there could be a cheap solution to gas prices they wont let this be, they want money adn lots of it and they wont let and cheap solutions get in their way

I think its funny, how so many people are concerned about growing food in bad city air!
Dont you think its more harmful to actually breath the air whole year round.
Or other hand: there would finally be an economic reason to keep city air cleaner. Maybe something would happen than ;)
I think the concept is very interesting, once we have solved our energy problem by cheap solar or nuclear fusion.
I have only one question: is it really possible to grow good, tasty food in greenhouse conditions? If so, why is it always crap.

Cheers

Hi

The basement of 720 Bathurst has an indoor farm, where they grow salad sprouts and the wheatgrass for Booster Juice. The problems there are
- lots of flourescent lights (using nuclear or other dirty energy)
- soil that is basically mined virgin peat bog dug up in another part of Ontario and trucked in over long distances
- a huge mould problem from the humidity inside (last I checked they sprinkle a thin layer of dirt over the base of the grass to cover the mould carpet, so that feeling of nausea you get from your wheatgrass may NOT be your body 'detoxing')
- mice galore.

I guess you could climate control the whole thing if you were building a new building for this, plus you could use mould-killer if you were going to go non-organic, so mould needn't be a problem. And mice could be killed a lot more ruthlessly than at 720 Bathurst. But you still have the problems of how to get a lot of soil to the middle of the city in an environmentally responsble way, and you are still using electric lights instead of free sunshine. It'll probably beat trucking stuff in from Florida or Mexico in environmental terms, but is it that much better than some greenhouse in Newmarket?

My name is Chris Jacobs and I would like to rebut the comment posted about me just hiring a 3d artist....

Although the Vertical Farm idea was thought up by Dr. Dickson Despommier over 8 years ago (actually, it was a class project that his students helped him come up with), I personally designed the vertical farm that's been published around the world and across the net. I did not simply "...hire a 3d artist to render the model." I personally designed the structure in Rhino3d on my own from scratch with NO direction from Dr. Despommier. I then handed the model to my good friend, Dean Fowler who remodeled it with my direction in 3d Studio Max...while working with a game designer and architect by the name of Rolf Mohr to has out the details and final look of the tower before being comped into a ad we were creating for our client (a huge 3d software company).

The comment, "Your credits are misguided." is itself misguided and an uninformed comment.

After the ad we were working on was killed due to management change, I personally presented the design to Dr. Despommier - to his liking. After publishing the image on his site...we got some press after working on the model for almost 2 years...that culminated in an article written by Lisa Chamberlin for New York Magazine. Myself, along with Storyboardsonline.com created 6 illustrations that went into that publication. We had 2 days to create them. I had met with Dr. Despommier in his office in NYC just a few weeks beforehand to discuss what these illustrations might be if the article were to be finalized. Since then....a LOT of publications have published our design...including Popular Science this July. Please...make sure you're all informed before spewing misinformation.

This is very very exciting for me as well as a lot of people involved not to mention Dr. Despommier, Dean Fowler, and Rolf Mohr as well as Lisa Chamberlin, who was a key component to getting this out there.

At present, Dr. Despommier and I speak often (it's been almost 2 years now) and are working very hard to get the research done with real-world architects and designers....growers....real estate developers...etc, to see if this can actually happen in the near future. I applaud Dr. Despommier for having such profound conviction to bring this idea to the forefront. I can only say that my involvement helped to push things along.

something tells me those chickens won't be free-range.

i am appalled by most of these posts! this sites is called "treehugger" and yet when someone develops a possible solution to a problem, it gets attacked at the expense of a great idea. i expect that if a building is being proposed in a major city at least one of the many architects, city officials and engineers might have asked these practical and essential questions. from this brief explanation on this tertiary source you have started assuming a lot and the ignorance is blinding. THIS is NOT the place people who will implement these ideas will hear your concerns. save this banter for the forums where everyone can comment on your personal opinions. this area should be for adding links to the article for further research.

I'm an architecture student n i've always been very interested in green design and sustainable structures.

The idea of a farming skyscraper is very interesting and relevant for studies of future city scapes.

I'm currently working on a design proposal based around the same concepts. this blog has helped a lot in terms of what concerns and conflicts I need to consider in my design.

I'll be sure to post the link for it when i'm done.
Any advice, tips, links or referrances are welcomed.

Too bad the engineering and architectural needs of such buildings are completely ignored...nothing more than a pretty skyscraper filled with photoshopped images of crops.

The work of Dickson Despommier defies the laws of thermodynamics and is based on very loose, generalized figures.

However, it is quite important that the issue has been receiving so much attention - the need is undisputable and its implementation is inevitable

There is also a potential problem in terms of water usage, especially if the urban areas involved happen to be in Sunbelt locations like Las Vegas or Phoenix. Vegetation consumes water. Farming consumes water. If you increase the amount of cultivation per acre of land itself (the footprint of the building) while keeping the amount of land under cultivation the same, then usage of local water is going to go up. How do we deal with increases in water consumption?

I had thought of this a couple of years ago. However when I was considering the effiiciency of such a building I only estimated it to be 2 to 4 times more effective than horizontal farming.

I fully support this idea. I am currently studying to be an architect and these types of buildings are the structures that needed to be designed for the future. However Toronto due to some of the extreme cold temperatures there would need a FULLY enclosed skyscraper. Also the design I believe needs to use more natural light from the sun to conserve energy.

No, this would not solve the problems of Ethanol. Plants are not magical beings that manifest from nothing. They derive nutrients and energy from the earth/soil, water, and the sun[artificial lights....]. In a closed system like this there would need to be a constant influx of nutrients into the soil [fertilizer], a source of water, and energy to power the artificial lights (I'll let you do the calculations, if you must).

There will never be a way to make a hyper exploitive, growth based, and insane way of life sustainable. No matter how many groovy eco fuels we come up with, or technologies we invent.

The only level of technology that ever was or ever will be sustainable is the stone age.

No, this would not solve the problems of Ethanol. Plants are not magical beings that manifest from nothing. They derive nutrients and energy from the earth/soil, water, and the sun[artificial lights....]. In a closed system like this there would need to be a constant influx of nutrients into the soil [fertilizer], a source of water, and energy to power the artificial lights (I'll let you do the calculations, if you must).

There will never be a way to make a hyper exploitive, growth based, and insane way of life sustainable. No matter how many groovy eco fuels we come up with, or technologies we invent.

The only level of technology that ever was or ever will be sustainable is the stone age.