Spiraling Skyscraper Farms For a Future Manhattan

Mike writes "One of three finalists in this year's Evolo Skyscraper Competition, Eric Vergne's Dystopian Farm project envisions a future New York City interspersed with elegantly spiraling skyscraper farms. The biomorphic structures harness cutting-edge technology to provide the city with its own self-sustaining food source while dynamically altering the fabric of city life."

Comments

Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[eldavojohn]

One of three finalists in this year's Evolo Skyscraper Competition, Eric Vergne's Dystopian Farm project envisions a future New York City ...

So that's what they're aiming for these days? A dystopian future? Well, at least the architects are catching on to the trend our government's been setting.

I don't know if it's Slashdotted or what but from what I can see in other sources, these are really just photoshopped images some dude made while tripping balls.

I may have been raised a dumbass farmboy but here's a few hints to architects like this guy:

• Plants (especially plants like alfalfa or grasses as depicted) have massive root systems requiring literally tons of soil to be healthy.
• Tons of soil weigh a lot.
• Soil has no architectural integrity.
• Buildings don't like tons of weight with no architectural integrity.
• Plants need water. Lots of water.
• Buildings don't like water.
• Plants die & rot (it's natural). Rotting plants smell. People don't like smelly buildings.
• Currently we use large machines to cultivate plants because it sucks, none of these images look like that would be possible.

I could go on for hours about how completely unrealistic this bad idea is. These pictures indicate that the architects have little to no idea of how top soil and nutrient cycles work.

There's no better way to put a million people into a square mile than skyscrapers in a city. Leave Manhattan as Manhattan and instead focus your efforts on controlling waste and returning the Northeast to massive forests (for some reason Americans love to overlook the ridiculous logging that took place here while we bitch and moan about the rain forests).

Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

Tons of soil weigh alot? By my calculations it should only weigh a few tons..

and no, you do not need soil to grow plants.. Hydroponics and Aeroponics do not use soil and have impressive yields.

The rest of your argument is just as poorly thought out, the major down side I see to farming in the city is the toxins the plants will absorb from the air making it into the food supply.

Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you have never been to the Living Earth at Epcot. They have plants growing quite successfully with absolutely zero soil. In the air. On rotating armatures.
For a closer to home example, go two houses down and ask the indoor pot growers how many plants they have going in that converted home.
Also, look into biofilm farming technology.

Or, better yet, you could ACTUALLY research some of your points before you jump on the "this could never happen, just destroy the communities outside NYC" rant train.

It is all technologically feasible, if not likely in the way the entrant envisions. If you believe half of the futurists in the country, it's almost inevitable unless someone finds a way to regulate the human birth rate.

In short: STFU, read more dystopian novels, and think outside of your cube.

Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[Reziac]

Not to mention that most food-producing plants need a full day of DIRECT sunlight every day of their lives. Indirect light doesn't cut it. Half days of sunlight don't cut it. They need more energy than that (after all, plants are essentially an energy-binding system, and their food value is directly proportional to how much energy they can bind).

Oh, and about water, it's heavy. WAY heavier than soil. Dry soil is light, but not much grows in it. Watered soil is heavy!

Whenever I see a project like this, I know the designer has read too much science fiction and hasn't driven enough combines.

Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[denttford]

Not only that, but from a real estate perspective, it makes no sense. If you build vertical space in Manhattan people or companies want to move in.

Apples don't give much of a good goddamn in which county they are grown. People care where they live.
If vertical farming makes sense (from an economic and agricultural perspective) do it... I don't know... maybe on farmland?

This post brought to you from the 12th floor in Midtown.

Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[MozeeToby]

Most of your arguments come down to one thing: soil.

Generally, vertical farming ideas utilize hydroponics (growing plants with nutrients dissolved in water) to get around this problem. It is a technology that has been used (in smaller scales) for decades with many different plant species and is known to produce much higher yields (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics#Higher_Yields/). Ironically, hydroponic farming also uses much less water than traditional farming, because the water is recycled through the system until it is actually used by the plants as opposed to irrigating a field and having most of the water evaporate before it is used.

As for the other issues, I have toured several greenhouses in my life and it is not a smell that is repulsive. Many people enjoy the smell of growing things, though doubtless it is something that urbanites would have to get used to. As far as cultivation, well there is no need to spray herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizer so generally the only cultivation necessary is planting and harvesting. Do you honestly believe that we can build machines to plant and harvest thousands of acres of open field, but can't automate the process in a controlled environment?

I'm not saying that this particular design is sound, it looks like a fairytale structure the guy though would look cool rather than something designed with efficiency or strength in mind.

Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[random coward]

Malthus! Is that you? What makes you think you'll be right this time?

Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Tons of soil weigh alot? By my calculations it should only weigh a few tons..

Maybe it's dark matter soil--then each ton would weigh over 10000 tons.

Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[eln]

unless someone finds a way to regulate the human birth rate.

That's easy, just give everyone a Slashdot account.

Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality

[Belial6]

As repugnant as it may be, it is physically impossible for the population to outstrip the food supply.

Pollution?

[Toe, The]

Any concern about the dense air pollution in NYC getting into the food? Doesn't seem like particularly "organic" food when the plants are feeding on car exhaust and cigarette smoke...

Employment problems solved..

[onion2k]

It's very pretty and all, but for all it's "I copied this from nature!" functionality he seems to have forgotten to design a way to actually harvest the crops. If you can't drive a combine harvester or a tractor around it then it's not much cop as a farm.

Unless he's suggesting we return to manual labour. In which case he's solved all our employment problems at the same time and he should be heralded as a genius.

silithid

[OglinTatas]

Looks like something the silithid might build. I'm thinking the cenarion circle is going to ask me to go there and hack up 15 searchers, 20 tunnelers, and return with 5 egg sacks for study.

Economics

[pavon]

And even if they could solve all the engineering problems, there is no way it will ever be economically viable to use prime real estate in the middle of Manhattan for farming. It will always cost more to farm in a sky scraper than on the ground, so they won't be able to compete in the global market against traditional farms. Furthermore, using it locally won't matter either. New York is a major shipping hub, and has more fresh food passing through it than the vast majority of the country, and as a consequence has lower grocery prices than many parts of the country.

The only point at which something like this would make sense is if we've transformed the vast majority of the planet into a giant city, like Tantor.

So far removed from basic common sense

[Wrath0fb0b]

Land on Manhattan remains some of the most valuable land on the planet. And he wants to use it for the most land-intensive production imaginable? For the price of an acre on Manhattan, you could buy 100 acres in the Midwest, plus the equipment and personnel to operate it, plus transportation of the final product to NYC. That's the market trying to give you a hint that allocating Manhattan real estate to agriculture is not the most efficient thing to do.

Even more damning, the whole damned point of having a civilization is to allow a small minority of farmers to produce enough food for everyone so that the rest of us can do things like engineering, science, art, law, politics, philosophy and all those other things that many of us find more satisfying than toiling in a field.

Disclosure: I have a garden in my backyard and I enjoy growing food in it. I don't, however, delude myself into thinking that it's anything other than a hobby -- one that is not economically sound (in the sense that I can buy the finished products much cheaper than I can grow them myself). Since I have to bring in soil, water and fertilizer, I'd be lucky if the whole thing was carbon neutral.

Bees

[snspdaarf]

Maybe we are supposed to wait for the bees to fill the thing with honey, then eat the building.

Man that's ugly, and pretty damned impractical

[Overzeetop]

There's a really good reason most buildings are rectilinear - anything else is significantly more expensive to build. I love how these designers just think we'll magically come up with the ability to analyze, design and fabricate these types of structures. Have you even wondered why we don't all live in Gehry-inspired buildings? It's because, as interesting as they are to look at, they cost between 5 and 50 times as much per square foot of usable space to build. Now, I'm sure most Wall Street types, with annual salaries that look like my phone number, don't care how much their living space costs, but I work for a living and I just can't see multiplying my mortgage times 10 just so food that grows just great on a farm down the road can grow in the flat next to me.

Sure, you can hydroponic this and aeroponic that, but I'm still waiting for anyone to actually make a sustainable, profit generating business which operates in all the sectors of agricultural products. And make a city produce it's own food? You've got to be kidding me. It takes something like three acres of flat land to support a person on an ongoing basis (no, I don't have a citation). I'll give you that I'm off by an order of magnitude AND that you can get an order of magnitude better results by using hydroponics. You'd need to double to quadruple the space for every person (1300SF hydroponics per person vs less than 600SF per person for living). So now instead of increasing your mortgage/rent tenfold, you'll have to double or triple that. But hey, you'll get free food (without processing) for just 29 times what you currently pay for your mortgage, which probably comes out to only a few times your annual income. And you still haven't figured out _how_ to harvest and process that material in such a system.

Why can't they just call these science fiction studies? I hope the winner didn't expect a cookie.