Recently I blogged on the FormShift Vancouver Competition [1]with the aim of creating a dense and green city [2]. The competition had a long range of interesting and innovative ideas. One of them came from Romses Architects [3]with their ‘Harvest Green Tower’; an amazing concept for a vertical farm in Vancouver. For this they received an honourable mention in the category for a mixed use primary (arterial) site along a major Vancouver street that includes a rapid transit station.
The vertical farm is complete with a tower for growing fruits and vegetables, a livestock grazing plane, a boutique dairy farm, commercial space, transit lines, renewable energy and more. Thus, the Harvest Green Tower has the potential to be a food growing, energy producing, living, breathing sustainable transit hub. The concept is centred on sustainable food production as well as the creation of a multi-purpose space that can house, transport, feed and entertain people.
The tower consists of interlocking tubes that grow various fruits and vegetables, house chickens and contain an aquaponic fish farm. On top of the vertical growing tower, a rainwater cistern collects and waters all plants and animals. At the base of the tower there is a livestock grazing plain as well as a bird habitat and boutique sheep and goat dairy facility. Underneath is a grocery store, farmer’s market and Harvest Tower Restaurant. Renewable energy is produced from rooftop mounted wind turbines and photovoltaic glazing on the building with the additional help of geothermal heat pumps and methane generation from composting.
The vertical farm has a multipurpose aim. Not only will the tower produce local organic food. It will also support people with live-work units off to the side of the tower, an educational centre and a seed lab. The base of the tower features a transit hub along with an underground parking lot and shared car co-op. Thus, the Romses Tower has the potential to play a crucial role in the production of locally produced food.
Source: www.inhabitat.com [4]
Links:
[1] http://www.formshiftvancouver.com/index.php?/projects/the-competition/
[2] http://sustainablecities.dk/en/blog/2009/04/creating-a-dense-and-green-city
[3] http://www.romsesarchitects.com/
[4] http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/05/11/amazing-skyscraper-farm-for-vancouver/