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I am both a farmer and an architect (I was raised on a farm and worked as a farmer for 10 years, then went to college to study architecture) This designer is an idiot. Yes, you could technically make a giant vertical greenhouse, but why would you WANT to?

Firstly, you offer no real reason as to why you think this 'designer' is an idiot other than stating you have been a farmer and an architect.

Secondly, the project website http://www.verticalfarm.com/ identifies a number of reasons why it may be desirable to develop 'vertical farms' most notably a lack of available space for anticipated increases in food production capacity. There are others given, you just need to read through the site.

1). The vast majority of the labor would have to be done by hand. There is no way in HELL you are getting a 200hp tractor up there, period. The other option is to have equipment built into the building that can be used, but that gets unbelievably expensive, fast. 1920's all over again? No thanks.

I do not follow your reasoning here. Can you clarify why you think that the vast majority of the labour would have to be performed by hand? You mention of tractors demonstrates that you have not even read the index page of the site, had you done so, you would have noticed the following VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)

I do not believe that static equipment (for ploughing, watering, etc.) would be prohibitively expensive; a moving gantry for ploughing and irrigation purposes would be relatively simple to implement; I won't go into engineering details, but we are talking simple in terms of electric motors, chain or cable drives with some minor hydraulics.

Machinery with these basic mechanisms have been designed and used for at least the last 100 years so I highly doubt that any significant new design or operating challenges would have to be addressed. In my view, it ought to be possible to build such machinery at low cost. Obviously, there are also installation costs to consider, but we must not forget that these would be amortised over the equipment's lifetime.

2). Plants simply don't do as well in green houses as they do in nature. Yeah, you can get close with careful application of various fertilizers and chemicals, but then it isn't organic anymore!

Can you give us a little more information as to why this is the case? I would also (again) question if you have actually read the site in any detail. If you read the (pdf warning) report here http://www.verticalfarm.com/pdf/report2006/Commerc ially%20Crops.pdf (apologies for my inexperience in submitting slashdot posts - I don't fully understand the linking system), then you will note that paragraph 2, page 36 mentions an already existing underground vertical farm in Japan which you can also read about here http://www.cityfarmer.org/basementTokyo.html

Whilst this is not a commercial venture, it does illustrate the feasibility of the vertical farm concept.

3). Architecturally this would be a nightmare. Water everywhere + low ventilation to conserve heat in the greenhouse = HUGE mold and building decay problems. Greenhouses work because they don't have anything for water to seep into, they are basically steel and glass. That wouldn't work for a VERTICAL greenhouse though, you would need concrete, vapor barriers, water flashing... Again. We are talking about a LOT of money. I think my family will stick with our little patch of former swampland.

Seriously, you are claiming to be an architect; whilst I know your role is to make things look pretty, please at least demonstrate a basic grasp of the construction te

For several years now, my friends have watched as I geek out over some house plants. I have had a great deal of fun watching several of my plants grow.

Amaryllis
About 7 years ago, I was given an Amaryllis. A flowering plant that has a bulb. When I received the bulb, it was already on the way to flowering. When it flowered, I took a q-tip and cross polinated the flowers against one another (not sure what the correct term is). I left the flowers on the plant until they dried out and fell off. After a few weeks, the stem on which the flowers grew turned into a small bulb that obviously contained seeds. I have since re-planted the seeds and given away about 10 small amaryllis plants to friends. Unfortunately, I have not been able to watch any of the small plants grow large enough to flower again, but hope to do so with my most recent bunch. I have also had the original large bulbs split into separate bulbs several times. I now have four large bulbs from the original (plus the many small plants that have grown from seed).

Ficus
When I finished school, I purchased a small ficus tree. It grew quite well sitting in the window. When it out-grew its pot, I trasferred it into an overly large Rubbermaid container. Once it was in the too-large container, the extra soil space allowed it to grow out of control. As I was living in a small, urban apartment, I decided to plant my own "lawn" in the pot. I was able to sustain a small patch of green grass along with the tree for an entire summer (all indoors). I learned a great deal about small ecosystems (clippings must be VERY small to not matt down new growth) and potting soil from bags (these bags contain bugs- if the plant is indoors, the bugs will be indoors too).

Worms
One of the things that I learned from the Ficus-lawn experiment (see above) was that a small potted-plant system does not break down organic matter very quickly. I spoke to several friends, gardeners and academics. They all said that the possibility of getting the lawn clippings to compost properly in the large container was fairly slim. However, they said that if I was interested, I should look into getting some worms to help out. They also said that the worms would help with small bugs. On several occasions, I gathered earthworms that appeared on the sidewalks after rains, but I am not sure that any of them survived for long in the soil system (I believe that worms require fairly loose soil and potted plants generally end up with fairly dense soil).

I have also played with various other herbs and flowering plants. I have 4 calla lillies that I have grown from the same cross polination "technique" that I used with the amaryllis described above. The callas live happily in my office windowsill with a cyclomen, hyacinth, and several pots of amaryllis (at various stages of maturity). They all seem happy enough living in a windowsill.

All that said, there is a wealth of information out there on how to grow plants of all varieties. As useful as the information is, I have always found it more interesting to experiment on my own and see how much I recall from high-school biology and geolgraphy courses. A bit of common sense can keep almost any plant alive; a bit of experimentation and work can grow a single plant into many or

While I'm sure it will eventually work out as a tiny compost pile, the small size of that bin is just calling out for it to be made into a worm bin. You just use typical red earthworms to eat all the garden and food waste, and end up with the most fantastic crumbly black fertilizer.

This is a good place to start.

Oh yeah, standard designs all have drainage, and most are made to work indoors (low/no stink, if done properly). Just check out a link or two.

It's not a laughing matter - it's easy to make jokes when you live in North America where the population density is 32 people per square mile - in Asia it's 203 - but for Hong Kong we're talking 6,571.14 per square kilometer.... a smaller area than square miles. Also a large proportion of Hong Kong is uninhabitable mountains or isolated islands - the real habitable area's density exceeds the 20,824.38 quoted for Macau.... I mean Hong Kong people go there to escape the crowds!

Hong Kong's population grows by 1 million every ten years and everyone has to be accomodated. The large proportion of people live in high rise residential on reclaimed land, and construction is the number one source of garbage in Hong Kong. When you add up all these issues then any way to improve construction efficiency and sustainability and reduce waste is important.

Now all this might be moot - I mean Hong Kong is literally on the other side of the world.... but hang on... check out this article in the Economist. Predictions are for half a billion Americans by 2050. Where are they going to live?

The Integer project has relevance here.

Living in Hong Kong is like living in an Arcology and many of the trends visible here will need to be transferred to North America if the population does increase to 500,000,000 people.

So next time you crack a joke about living in a cubicle 24/7 at work and play - you might just be fortelling the future....

The species in question is Namalycastis Abiuma.

A picture can be found here.

The same Article Text and a better picture of the monstrous bugger can be found Here. Scary lil bastard eh?

Can't find much out there on the actual habits of the lil bugger. I user a vermicomposter with redworms to reprocess kitchen vegetable waste for the garden. Anyone know how well these little(?!?) monsters eat? Be interesting to toss one in a bin, and see how it does.